I have often whilst in bed some post midnight hour, with a book of poetry limp and unread on my chest, thought about you. Here I am deep in mind heavy thinking, in the gone vague night. I like it best when it is raining; there is wisdom in rainstorms, through the curtains, outside the glass upon sparkling cobblestone, dribbling rain torrents inspire a shrewd hypnotic peace, the night makes philosophers of us all. A long walk home, takes longer in the night. If there is a mystery about the night, I am yet to see it, despite my frequent returning; if God comes to earth, I dare say it is in the night, he is a God of dusk and twilight, amongst us in weary guises never comfortable never complete. The daylight makes hasty bundles of us all; the night has calm, slumberous nerve endings.
To think of you and I, this shall always appear both endless and meaningless. I compare this to nothing; it is a mere suggestion, a memory of thought and doubt, ever returning to me in that warm bed cloth cocoon, bed side lamp and a blue tattered blanket for a friend. I have drunk all the ale put before me, and willingly asked for more. I have and do laugh too gleefully in response to the jokes told me; here I am the dying king of shingles, blistered, anxious and tumbling without thought or care. I compare myself to you, through that veil of horror called success. We preserve teh delusions of truth in the hope of taking more someday. What would you take from this creature; My room is pale and without adornment, I can see the moon through the collapsed fastenings of the curtain fabric, hanging from the rail, so it is here I remember to go walking. I can hear the music of housemates through the too thin walls. I sip tea in greedy hope, and if it were not for night I should remember noting at all.
What are those other solitary times? You have them too I am sure. To travel the city fruitlessly spying old familiar things and wistfully mourning all those places we shared gleefully in concealment? But then I was often to be found sitting on the canal side, peering into the canal murk coloured by dusk, feet hanging child fashion over the edge with twinkling shoal splattering of street lights upon the too dark water; it was there that I remembered you in beautiful honesty. Back to the countless café conversations, back to the riotous breathless chases through sparse goodly woods; you were always faster. The pretended false starts of races along riversides you never won. Impossibly delicious Ice cream after an impossible day's rambling about the summer mountain, baby sips! From a lion and a lam to my dour room in easy retractable pleadings, the lonely extend themselves too eagerly into memories, an actor out on loan. Loneliness is the most brutal of all human conditions, for its sincere grip and grab into our heart. Lonely people do not lie to themselves, the soft everyday delusions persist, they become clear and undeniable, it comes as all those thoughts suppressed and unwelcome. A lonely soul can bare no deception. What can be successfully hidden in night lonely revelries? So it is that I and a million unknown others go a walking about the towns and city streets.
I am imagining the conversations we shall never have, tilting my head, smiling, looking aghast and then revising that and looking sweet and shy. You appear nightly at the false door step on my mind, fluffy white scarf about your sweet chin, purple woolly hat upon your too beautiful head, smiling, with hair cast down on either side hiding your ears. You stand there impossible feet squirming and fingers clasped playfully above your tight jeans belt. You return to me through the force of my own imagination and I am unforgiving; however this I can not endure for long. So the door bell in my illusion twangs and steel horns again, I unlatch the lock and see you in the chill vapour breath night, flushed wintry cheeks and happy go lip beauty. I am harsh no longer, but endearing, severe maybe but welcoming, we collapse from the sky and grow again upon the lakeshore, eating cool fruits and discussing our vainglorious future. Yet this illusion to is altered, the bell caterwauls, you appear again and again; yet this time I am the shy bashful and it is you who has travelled implausible distances to chastise me, yet always wanting intimacy, you strike me and I hold you ' perfect romance. Again this illusion is altered, tired old theatre mind, but now I open the door and quick heart beat suddenly you take my house warm hand in your street chilled fingers and say something too wonderful.
- Baby, I want a cuddle (beautiful grinning wonderment ' then sudden serious face) but first I need a pee. Sweet almost too painful giggle accosts my ears. But no one can say these words; they are the intense words of a lonely night thinker. I have the long to nights to weave spells of imaginary discourse; you would have an impossible door bell bated breath second.
I am tired of walking these nights alone; you know I am the sick, but not the brutal one. You think me a wretched urchin, having lost nothing and gained nothing; which is untrue but however which in truth is a finer balance; for he that takes but a little, weighs too much, and she that loses but a little weighs not nearly enough and both tumble down. Through the night sky, like keys carelessly dropped upon a wooden peer, or a dozing sunlight bench, something in split second motion, neither colliding nor being thrown. It is best to concentrate on an internal equilibrium, only the thoughtless hectic day permits this; by surrendering nothing, stealing nothing. Yet we are both plummeting, aghast and teeth nail clawing at the memory of the other; we have both lost and won such victories that reduce us, you have stolen from me and I have stolen from you; thus we can never be free of the other. We can not and will not return from the other what the other stole so greedily. Outside this aggressive thoughtful turmoil, I make wonderful jest, playfully flirt and grin with allies and enemies that come seeking everything except badinage and carnage in the form of enforced joviality. To stop on this dark Victorian street I pause and recall¦
A sparsely inhabited boarder town, with one storey sleepy cottages, I urinate in a bush by the road and we call it a victory for England. Not quite Scotland and yet not quite England, it is the bed and breakfast evening of our one and only night in some deranged women's home, we shyly enquired, she quietly showed us to our room Mr and Mrs Jackson (we were playful then). Her lurking mad women face, too sweet really, too lonely to be capable of the brutal crimes I imagine her to have secretly done and hidden away in her mad woman's heart, you laugh at my invented history and I smile having pleased you in some meagre way. We walk with that intimate playful grace of brother and sister down to the meadow; we talk with the quick wit and joy of dearest friends; it is only in our eyes that the sky knows we are lovers. I help you unnecessarily over a small damp country gate; you condescend to permit me, you avoid splashing into a shallow puddle, I stomp into it with gusto and young man assuredness. We spy the sky, and discuss the meanings hidden in the sulphur lights and mauve clouds, the sash of blue and the bird too swift to see but we agree it was a buzzard, to you and I all birds are buzzards.
-You must stop drinking. (Earnest demand from a powerless lover, then those words meant nothing to me)
-I will, I promise, it is ruining us! (Half hearted treatise of he that has only half an heart to bargain with. Then those words meant nothing to you)
-I believe you. (A soft kiss to hide a lie)
-I shall, those demons that I have invented can not prevail. (I say with a strong sincere loving cuddle, to hide a lie).
Alone a man walking in the night may also cry in the night, but he may not lie to himself in the night. Underneath the looming edifices of a Cathedral in decline, a man in decline finds only solace; staring beautifully up at the poet statue and his too massive companion colossal wolfish. I devour that stone affliction, to crack under the malicious moon gleam, violin destruction - to growl and come pounding spell witchery after me; I stand to brawl; this is theatre - I raise an inadequate branch as if it were an inadequate sword, from my diminished valour I tremble, I am Theodrid, I am Diomedes, I am the curly haired noble warrior in dreams and I tremble at its bounding flea greyness! Lone meg and I stand beside a sickened tree, drooping lethargically in the burdensome night, come heavy do those slashing coal paws and tear my throat leaving me quivering, dying spurting gushing vitality upon the neat "do not walk upon grasses of a Cathedral lawn, I am worm tongue. I recall everything that you have hidden from yourself in the throws of my fraudulent death.
A man it is said may die thoroughly in spirit years before the body; a generation of spiritless men, ambling dog leggedy across this electric no mans land. It is said the heart of a women, is not safe in the hands of a man; I find it peculiar that a women should ever wish to abandon her heart to a palm at all, male or not. It can be said the heart of a man is not safe in the hands of a women; or that a women may die thoroughly in intellect years before her body withers. All these things come to me in the chill jacketless mooching of night, shivering and postulating to unknowable girls upon imaginary doorsteps. It is here alive and not dead that I recall¦.
Sitting in some remote woody corner, collecting wood for a small fire, to keep it burning, after the hasty hot dogs eaten, you facing me, sat upon my thighs, with your legs wrapped about my back in the half shadow chill and lazy sunlight of a Cumbrian day together. Even though your scriptures say we must not, we slowly rub the other, lips tort and eyes peaceful, to forcefully grind our clothed bodies into each other, wrap our yearning hands about each others fabric defence ever tighter; here you steal from me and I steal from you, damned thieves are silent lovers. So now I tell myself that it is in this lupine night we can make ferocious creatures out of stone, or indeed ice.
(Dank cheap café, pictures of forgotten eighties pop icons hang sorrowful from the walls; plastic wobbly chairs and lamenting tables, a green tiled floor, green room with an electric stove in one corner near the door)
He pays for breakfast; the lady grumbles nonsensical Northern prophecies in my ear. He sits across from you in the cramp, tight, window bright corner; He hangs from the chair, tattered hair and hung over eyes, dressed in regulation black - you sit immovable like an ice shelf; eager to scorn and thrash, to lash out against all those times he has hurt you, it is you that has the hurting power now; you see the wretched weakling before you and it is not pity that moves you, but rebellious dour passions - you blessed forgiving Christian, and so it is that you put brutal sentences daubed in thorns about his handsome head; as he whimpers in a grotesque parody of agony, here now you show the true worth of your ever compassionate and loving god. He sits at ease sipping coffee ' so you pierce his nonchalant chest with a spear of galvanised malice; you set such an example of Christian love, that no horror or spiteful crusade is beyond him, truly he sits before a daughter of Christ)
-You don't get it, you idiot, look at you, you stink!
-I know, so how are you?
-You disgust me, I am much happier now, more so than I ever was with you.
-Yes I suppose you must be, so how are things?
-Better, I have never been so happy. In your mind you try to recall a time, some recent event that enthralled you more than any lake, night kissing or playful chase ever did, to your mild discontent there is nothing, but a yawning grey characterless promenade of dull Tuesday nights, pointless Thursday evenings, tired Saturday roaming and grumpy Sunday listening. You shake your head and resume that superior grin reserved for imbeciles, politicians and below average intelligent cats.
-What (He glances about the cafe in estranged eagerness) but I thought we might talk.
-We are talking, what do you want, I have not time for you.
-But (He looks her in those once astonishing eyes, there is nothing, but a vapid green, a dried out leaf, a pain she barely admits, a malice from a void, half filled with altered meaningless scriptures and a darker forbidden yearning) you look quite different!
-Stop looking at me like that! Startled hatred, a moment of loss and you do recall a wondrous lake and the peculiar scent of hot dogs; a swift shake of the head and all is well.
-You look afraid, please do not be afraid!
- Look at you, you filthy pointless idiot! Tone changes and you now know to avoid his too earnest honest eyes.
-Did you ever exist at all (Flashing truthful horrific words put you to a shame) why am I here?
-What, oh shut up you blathering moron, what? (A quiet serene look and you reply with a tremulous rage) look here, what is it that you want precisely? I am busy! Here is a thought that you know all is dead inside you, a spiritless queen without a king, you play the guitar, cry, sleep alone and sing, it is the shame of the false righteous.
-Shall we take a walk along the canal bank? He enquires and you may have said yes but for the masterful delusion within you.
-Oh I am going, you make no sense, I have no pity left for you. Quick angry retreat, he spies you stomp grumpy out of the door, you glanced back and did not poke your tongue at him, maybe if you had, something would remain and truly now it would appear that you are one of gods chosen. He sits and gasps in glad defeat ' I never asked for pity, you gave it unjustly ' he mumbles and sips his cold awkward coffee.
I laugh the tears away as that empty door step approaches - wrestling upon a familiar tartan blanket on a dry shore pebble foam beach, thin tree branches hang too close, almost as to tickle us - I glance down the road at the distant lights and hold the key in chill fingered sorrow - I am sat upright, glancing out into the silver waters, a boat chug chugs along the lake shore vanishing, you are sat before me - I have no will to enter that foreboding dwelling place, the cars beep and rattle through the night like rats with bells about their ankles, if she is now an angel, I am glad to be a daemon - your back resting into my chest, your hair scenting my nostrils, your play with my hair twirling it in your gentle fingers, my arms wrapped bracelet fashion about you ' I stand to, there is not mystery in the night, you return with what you take with you, as with most things. There is no truth in faith, promise in ale, love in sex or victory in malice, there is nothing except that which you take stubbornly with you - suddenly you push into me playfully, we fall backward into the stick pebble earth, and you wiggle atop of me, giggling whilst you try to tickle my nose with your gentle finger, 101 ways to tickle the daunted failure ' I lock the bronze key into the rattled old lock, to push lightly and the warm fetid hair of communal living pinches my eyes - I am pinned in a delightful struggle, you tickle my too sensitive silly nose and you stab at my girlish stomach, I cry in joy like a girl would; we play these games endlessly and this is what I recall so well, remember too often in that imagined bloody wolf death: curiously chasing hedgehogs in the lake shore night. I am inside and straight to bed, not sleeping, not reading the book of poetry I bought myself in a rare absent minded flutter last winter. In the night I might say¦
You glad thoughtless creature, to be home living and half stupid, shyly respectful with a penchant for the pretence of peculiarity. I do not now, doubt that some baleful savagery and an intense curiosity spell bound you to attaching your frail half mocking limbs about me, yet looking back, glancing back to your face, your library face, I can now envisage a silly little thing, wanting nothing of the world and desiring so secret a pleasure you nearly choked and spluttered in your own mediocrity. But in truth, we go tumbling gladly, secretly glad to have battle cars and war trophies, these deeply treasured artefacts of a failed romance, and so it is that we are both now summoned to swim the languid delirious music moon.
