gap-jaw

A week gap.
Slices of sun, wind, ham - tidy domestic
terrorism, bi-partisan passive
aggressive sorties across
laminate and nudist beaches
with split leg promises and
beach-head cosmopolitan
brashness. It's de rigueur to
be blasé.

>>

I'm a construct half to foil
half to please the idea of
me. 1 third experiment in
ego to inquire obscurely into
my own relfection. Have I
begun to play myself, how does
this arc work devoid of
intervening tragedy and tight
coughs? A side-long glance
a writer-off, no stiff competition
that's hands down a quicker wit
more sinisterly applied to all
and sundry. Ever feel that
no words are left to you, none
untouched by countless
nibs, unscratched pecked fingers
typing this and that, predicate
and prejudice. We're gonna be
the wildest people we'll live
to see.

>>

I'm nothing if I'm not this high
I'm afraid of never fitting in, of
slipping out of my own skin.
Forgetting it. In a hotel. On a bus.
Heart stop flight-or-fight - frantic
pat-down, momentary relief.
Over there. Familiar.
Taut.
Grey.
One size fits all.
Each arm at a time. Pulled
tight, all re-arranged, settle
back into my head.

Somewhere near Palafrugell

You tend my hair
two grey's the count
An attention to the
composition of my eyelash
A catalogue of spots,
rogue bristles, sly,
defiant. Removed,
popped, denuded.
Maladies and rages
coruscating rash,
darkly mottled types
witnessed on the sheets,
vigil and signals
read, thoughts derived.
my my love how
much I am watched,
deep and contented,
visionary

At a kiosko in La Boqueria

There's so much more to this life - café
and butchers on every corner of a
high proud fruit-filled place.
I'm struck by the concentration -
of smells, of people, of jittery
rapid Spanish and men eating
mushrooms and newspaper.
I romanticise everything about
Europe because I've been told to,
I expect it of myself - one of
many greats. It's a self-assembly
day to day.

Bus to Barcelona

We pass weird squat towns
tall and crowded into valleys
everything looks deserted,
post-arcadian industrial ruin.
Underneath it all a rural-ghost
farm, littered with old stone
monasteries thrust under
the factories.
dirty Paso dobles - accusing pastel
heads doting the hills
then suddenly coke and nets
pine after pine into advertising
stock and taller barrios,
sleek architectural arguments
made in concrete and red light
another gherkin.mosaic
now coliseum doric grandeur
vistas nobler, higher still
filled with wire awning breath
and Gaudi's heights

Play with me

Ash. Smoke. Black.

Tony; middle-aged, wry, academic.

TONY: I’m not here to tell you what happened. You can see it for yourselves. The aftermath. I’m not here to clean out. To sift or sort through. I’m here to tell you what was lost. And what was found.
Let me show you;

A change. Clear light.

It’s 1988. The sun is shining. Somewhere a boy in sandals and blue socks plays cricket with his brother. Elsewhere people are getting ready to celebrate the Bicentenary. 200 years of settlement - white colonisation... I’m at my father’s house - sitting on his bleached white furniture, picking at the paint, staring at the yard. Tough grass out there. Good for rumbles, good for bull-rush. An apple tree teeters in the corner, its fruit more the neighbour’s than our own. His shed - long locked up - next to it. Never go in the shed. Not anymore. He’s about to tell me a story.

A man emerges; Older, greying, yellowed.

GEVARD: You want? (Offers him a Date) Its good. No? Hm, more for me.

TONY: My father. Lowering himself creaking into a chair. The stripped pattern fabric fading on our back verandah. Must have gotten 40 years of sun by now. Nearly as much as me. He offers me another date. No, thanks. I take a cup of coffee from him - there’s filigree gold on the rim, you don’t see glasses like that much anymore, not round here. It’s a long time till I see them again. He clears his throat.

A cough

And begins;