Thoughts on Our Nature

I spoke to a lemur

the other day

and he told me how the monkeys came

and murdered his family

I woke up the next morning and

though I had dreamt it

I could hear the trees stretching

groaning and

smothering one another

The insects were no different

waves of hard-shelled killers

the ants I watched at lunch

fought over a scrap of sand

the heads of their enemies adorned their knees

like trophies

and the children of the defeated

became slaves to the hive

above me in the rafters spiders span

death-traps for unwary travellers

their lethal engineering

spanned great empty voids

and spread until it clotted the empty spaces

they bred and bred until all that was left

was one another

then ate until the last curled up

and ended.

When the leaves fall, I will grieve for them.

I lie awake at night, 
under stars like heavy eyes 
behind the shade of unseen clouds - 
The sun will wake before I fall asleep.

When I rest beneath the trees 
I shade my eyes with splayed fingers 
and dream of running 
                        through piles of autumn leaves.
At summer's end the green vaults run red; 
a sea of rust in a bone yard of bare wood and bark,  
and the earth is cold and hard with early frost.

By the bonfires at summers end
I will toast to the ageing sun and the coming snow.
When the leaves fall, I will grieve for them.

Beaches in Albany (non fiction)

Western Australia is a less-visited region of Australia, and I have always liked it for that reason. Perth, the largest city, is frequented by hoards of Singaporean and Taiwanese tourists every year, but they seldom leave city limits. The rest of the area is Australia sans tourist-oriented gimmicks. Most visitors here are what are called the Grey Nomads, mobile home toting retirees who sweep through towns like locusts and don't contribute to the communities they frequent, so tourism isn't terribly high on rural WA's agenda.
Those efforts which are made, like the comical Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail are half hearted at best. The 'trail' is a footpath running next to a concrete pipe that transports water from the coastal areas to the mining regions in the middle of the desert. As part of the effort to make it a tourist attraction, a section of it was painted gold. Surprisingly, after a while they painted it grey again.

Though it was early January in Australia, it was summer in the southern hemisphere. With temperatures soaring to record highs in Sydney and Melbourne, the south coast town of Albany was blessedly cool, no higher than twenty most days even with the sun out. We had travelled down to the town from the city to experience the beaches and visit my cousin's mother in law, who was renting a house there.

Albany is a retirement town, full of interesting little shops and art galleries and home to large numbers of wealthy retired farmers. Its white-sand beaches are numerous, and those closest to town are lined with small restaurants selling fresh seafood. The town itself is built up the sides of a valley overlooking the ocean, a mix of idyllic old wooden houses and concrete and stone modern constructions. Our host's home was a little two bed bungalow, with a deck easily the size of the rest of the house looking out over the valley and down to the sea.

After some recoup time (it's almost a full day's drive from Perth to Albany), we travelled to a more remote beach, which we were told would be quiet and sheltered. The wind was up, and the temperature had dropped to about fifteen degrees. We drove through beautiful countryside, and then swept onto an anonymous dirt side road that then snaked down the steep sides of a cliff lined cove. At the bottom, things were a little more busy than we had been led to believe. A small colony of hang-gliders had camped at the top of the cove, and they circled above us like curious vultures, riding the updraughts on wings of red and green.

We parked up, and walked down to the beach with towels wrapped around us to keep the wind off. Against the vivid green of the cliff side vegetation, the beach was like powdered bone, and it squeaked as it compressed underfoot.

The sun had begun to sink below the cliff-line, and the shadow cast by it now covered much of the beach, leaving a sliver of shining sand against the crashing surf. It looked calm enough from the land but as we grew closer it became clear that the waves were a mixture of small harmless waves and occasional monsters which crashed far further up the beach than we expected. My girlfriend's long skirt was caught by one of these, soaking her from the waist down while she was paddling in the shallows. She waded back to shore, and we began to make our way back up the beach so she could change at the car.

As we were sauntering up, the sand protesting like a bag full of small birds I looked up at the sky to watch the hang-gliders. It occurred to me then, and I immediately voiced my curiosity about where they landed: I was quickly answered by a red shape hurtling past us, and a loud crash. We were standing on the landing area, marked out by two small red cones which neither of us had noticed.

We had been narrowly missed by a hang-glider, a grey haired man that was now being dragged down the beach by the heedless wind that had caught his wing. A small girl ran from the camp-site, shouting “Daddy? Daddy?!” and we stood like gawking idiots, paralysed by indecision. Luckily, the man was unharmed. He recovered quickly and collapsed the wing, then carried it to his truck, his daughter trailing behind and giving us evil looks. No-one else seemed upset, so we went back to the car and changed into swimsuits. Even this near-calamity was not enough to dampen our holiday spirit.

Looking back, swimming that day was not the greatest idea we had while in Australia. The beach was fairly cold by this point, even for our English sensibilities. The sun was going down, and the sea was choppy and unpredictable... Still, we ran down to the ocean with a kind of manic enthusiasm which is probably common among those who have spent the months leading up skidding around on ice under skies like beaten lead. And when we got into the water, it was at least a little warmer than the air. The waves were thrilling, and we splashed around like children while my family watched from the sand, wrapped in blankets against the bitter breeze. It was fun, but the surf got higher and higher, and we began to see bigger and bigger waves.

One of my best holiday photographs is also the last from this particular swimming expedition. It is a still of me with my hands thrown up in front of me, under a wave that looms well over my head.

Mexico City (Fiction)

I was a financial consultant in Mexico City, working for the government. After a messy divorce from my American wife I was in a bad place, flushing my life away with drugs. First pills, then coke, then crack.
I used to go for walks in the evening, which in my home town in Devon would have been fine, but in Mexico was not so clever. There was always the chance of being kidnapped or mugged, people tended to assume that the white guy must be loaded, and a few months ago they would have been right. Before the divorce it was a way of escaping the house, but by now it was just to score. My favourite spot was outside a youth centre on the top of the hill. There was always someone slouched against that wall, the faces changed but the prices always stayed the same.
Today, the dealer was a stocky Mexican with jail tattoos and a face etched with deep frown lines creating a permanently sorrowful expression. He looked up at me as if he was pleading with me to keep walking.
I didn't. I stopped, and we did business. He rolled it into a cigarette for me, and we stood leaning against the wall, looking out as the sun set over the mountains that ringed the city. It was beautiful through the thick curtain of smog, like an impressionist painting (his comment, not mine). The dealer and I chatted, he was unusually talkative, and unusually eloquent. His name was Jesus. He talked about art, and I listened and made the occasional comment, wondering how such an educated man ended up selling drugs on a street corner. The irony did not reach me then, I was cocooned in a layer of drug induced euphoria.
We finished the cigarettes, and I already felt the drugs beginning to wear off. We had smoked slowly, and I had hung around, now I was coming to the end of the high and I was still standing next to him. I dug my hand into my pocket for more money, but he put a hand on my wrist, his eyes on the end of the street.
I turned, and saw a silver and black police car turn the corner. I froze completely, hand still in my pocket, but as the car began to accelerate the dealer’s grip tightened and he dragged me into the youth centre by my wrist.
We ran through the building, hearing the car pulling up outside, doors opening and closing, and through to the outdoor swimming pool. It was crowded with Mexicans trying to escape the evening heat. The dealer stripped hurriedly and jumped into the pool, merging with the crowds of laughing Hispanics. I was left standing at the side, a blonde haired and blue eyed Gringo.
I stripped down and tried to do the same, but when the cop emerged from the building, I was quickly dragged to the side of the pool by the lifeguard and handcuffed on my knees in a spreading puddle of water.
All this time, the dealer stood in the crowds, face turned away, trying to look unconcerned. The cop paced the pool and seemed about to give up when a kid of about eight whistled loudly at him, pointing out the Dealer. “Here‘s your man! Right here! Here is Jesus!”
Jesus the crack dealer was dragged to the side of the pool, and he didn’t resist. Instead he looked up at the police officer with his mournful eyes and a small, sad smile. “Hello, brother.”
“You,” The officer's face darkened, a dangerous and irrational hostility glinting in his eyes. “I had hoped that it would not be you, Jesus.” He pulled Jesus out of the water by his hair, and threw him to the ground, crouching over him until his bristly moustache was an inch from the Dealers crooked nose. “It killed our mother when you went to prison, and here you are again.”
Jesus backed up, scrambling across the tiles as he plead with his pursuing brother.
“I am sorry, Miguel! I am weak... Please, have mercy. Let me go!”
Miguel shook his head. “God may have mercy on you Jesus, but I do not. Not any more.” As his brother scrambled to his feet, Miguel drew his service revolver. As Jesus ran desperately, trying to reach the door in the chain-link fence around the pool, Miguel raised the pistol and steadied his shaking hand. As Jesus clawed at the gate and realised it was locked, Miguel fired twice.
The sound of the gun firing so close to my ear deafened me for a moment and I watched Jesus fall in slow motion, blood hanging in the air like Christmas lights twinkling in the fading sun, then spreading across the tiles and through the pool water, winding between the legs of retreating swimmers. It stained the puddle I was kneeling in, seeped around my knees as I cried, screamed, and felt the burn as hot metal pressed against the top of my head. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears.
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-m sorry, signor.”
The ringing faded in time for me to hear the end of my death sentence, the hammer clicking back, and the thunder of feet mingling with the pounding of my heart. I could taste salt and copper. I could smell blood, chlorine and my own singed hair. I could see the sunset reflected in the water, spreading red across the blue.
I could feel my pulse in the disc of pressure where the barrel was pressed against my skull. A few scant meters away, Jesus was bleeding and gasping like a harpooned fish. He was dying, and I was next.
“STOP!” A woman’s voice. English. “Miguel, for god‘s sake, what have you done?!”
The pressure of the gun barrel eases, and I raise my head, looking over at the woman by the centre’s battered door. I recognise her, I talked to her at a summit on social reform a month ago. We had flirted a little.
“Please, don‘t make this worse. You said you just wanted to talk to Jesus, and look what you have done! Don‘t kill him. I have called an ambulance, they will be here soon. Leave. Now!”
I fainted then, it was all too much, but I understand that Miguel left, and I was taken to hospital, then discharged without even making a statement. Jesus survived, and refused to press charges or even name his attacker, while all the other witnesses claimed sudden attacks of blindness. He was jailed for twelve years for possession with intent to distribute. I suffered a broken wrist and a perforated eardrum, but was released without charge into the hands of the woman who would save my life not once, but twice. My wife Sophie is a social worker in the poorer areas, helping to manage the finances of places like the youth centre, making sure no money vanishes into the hands of corrupt employees. With great patience and sensitivity she helped me throw my addiction to drugs. Miguel, I understand, shot himself a week later out of guilt.
Sadly, though, Jesus has not changed for his experience. He still deals crack and heroine to other inmates, making their dirty, nasty lives shorter and nastier still with his sad eyes and his love of Rembrandt. His life is irreparable, and he is trapped within the cycle of drug use in this city that I am now trying to stop. The time has come to shed the bonds of the drug trade in Mexico, and to tell the drug lords and criminals that run this city that enough is enough.

The Golem

Grim and armed we explore an urban hell.
Walking through streets of ash and broken glass,
past scavengers picking through old corpses.
They ignore me, I am not alone.

We pass the remains of a skyscraper,
toppled on its side, ribcage of torn steel.
Flickering witch-lights glow in the darkness,
the city dies hard, it is burning still.

Stinking sulphur smoke boils up from the ground,
bilious and yellow, it sticks and cloys.
We cannot see, we cannot breath the air.
Blind we must scramble to find higher ground.

I climb the buttress of the building,
scrambling up the iron balustrade.
I clear my lungs and see what lies beyond
the ochre haze that rises from beneath.

The city lies like a carpet of ash,
like the last embers in a cooling hearth.
Before us a crater, it stinks of death,
smell the hot blood and baked stone in the air.

This place is what we came for, it is here.
Statue lain within it's earthen cradle,
as cracked and broken as it seems to be
It turns it's granite head and looks at me.

The Statue (fiction)

I used to pass a statue in the park every day, on my way to school. It was of a man walking, and covering his ears. I always thought it had a strange expression, like it was afraid of something.
I don't go by there so much any more, after Uni I've been working up in the city and I only get down for holidays, and even that isn't as often as it used to be. It's since then that I've noticed.
The statue creeps. It moves. Every time I come down for Christmas it's slightly different, and a little further down the path. It's as if it's walking very... very slowly. At first, I ignored it. Then, when I couldn't do that any more, I just assumed I was going a little crazy. One in four people have some kind of mental illness, and this was mine. A walking statue, no big deal. At least I didn't think there were tiny men living in my walls, or that the lady who brought the tea around at work was a lizard alien from Alpha Centauri... Right?
But I couldn't get it out of my head. And I didn't want to go see some one, because thinking you're crazy is so much less scary than the idea of some doctor confirming it for you. So I tried to avoid it. But that didn't work, I'd go for a walk and bang, there I'd be. I would dream about it, wonder whether the statue was alive, or try and convince myself it was a prank by some particularly patient artist. So I looked up the sculptor, and the story got stranger. There was no record of anyone commissioning the thing, no record of it being unveiled, or even installed. No record at all, other than the odd picture on Facebook of the statue with a Santa hat on, or some drunk person draped over it.
The pictures gave me an idea, so I put them all together. There was one or two every year for the last five years, and in each the arms were a little different, and the facial expression changed. The feet moved too, in an inexorably slow shuffle, as if it were walking against a terrible wind. I wondered what it must be like to be the statue, if the world went past that fast it must seem like it is all noise and chaos. I imagined wading through time like an ancient tree, slowly being weathered down by the elements.
I felt, finally, like I was on to something. Like this might actually be happening. I showed it to my friend Sarah at work, and she thought it was moving too. I didn't tell her where I got the pictures from though, just let her think it was some internet prank. And I started going back home on alternate weekends, to see my parents... and take a photograph of the statue.
My parents noticed something was up after the first few times I came down. They tried to ask about it... was it something at work, was I having problems with my girlfriend (she had broken up with me after the nightmares got worse, but that's another story), I tried to tell them that it wasn't any of that, that I just wanted to spend more time with them now that I could afford to, but they didn't buy it. I had never been that keen to come home before after all. Before I had thought I was crazy, but now... I couldn't stay away.
Soon, I had a flick book, and an intervention on my hands. I came back from my walk to find my family, and a bunch of my old school friends. They had even roped in a couple of people from work who I didn't see as much as I used to; all waiting for me in the living room. They had found my pictures, and spread them on the coffee table.
I tried to show them what I had found out about the statue, but the pictures were all out of order. When I tried to order them, they looked at me like I'd gone nuts. Me! They weren't listening to what I had to say, they all just shook their heads. When I insisted, my dad got angry, and the old man threw them in the fireplace. All that work went up in smoke faster than would have thought possible, and though I had backups on my laptop, it made me so angry...
Anyway, I lost my temper, and that's how I got here, writing this letter. They keep me pretty sedated most of the time, but they say I'll be able to go soon. I just nod and smile, but I know they'll never let me back there... back to the park. So I'm leaving this message on my website, along with the pictures. If you're reading this, and you don't think I'm crazy, go take a picture and upload it for me. Maybe I'll have enough some day to make a proper video. That'll show them!

Sleeping Alone

I had a dream in which I was asleep,

and when I woke the world was much the same.

I rose to greet this strangest near-real day,

and did not think to question all the things

which in this world were slightly different.

The rain still pattered on my window frame,

the postman still delivered the wrong mail.

The homeless still held hats for falling change

and the drunks still leered from pub doorways and

spat and cursed the serving barman’s name

who’d cut them off with sun still in the sky.

I walked on through this place that was not mine,

and realised when I got home to rest

that what was changed and missing was my bed.

It was a bed for one, I was alone.

That moment I awoke in a cold sweat,

to find my own world waiting, dawn breaking

lying in my bed for two, beside you.