Memoirs of a Life Unlived

Counterintuitively I reach out to touch your soul in mascara-stained tissues and rucks of duvet. Eyes adapting to the dullness of curtained daylight, I find your face in transition - inscrutable now in the cosiest photographs. I have never been so unsure of what I'm sorry for.

Umber to butterscotch, the earth yields to scrappy trees and shrubs headstrong enough to break through - more litter than nature and a worn fringe capping the surrounding hills. Few walk; those who do receive that blank look ambulances get. A sun resembling one you knew is a different beast: much bigger teeth and a wounding bite only shade resists. Two birds of prey swoop on cursed things, taking turns to mesmerise you. Remember none of this surprises anyone but you, and lives continue in that careworn way coming for you.

Who claps and jigs and revels As the flames consume the barn? Who hacks the thickest forest And gets lost amid the stumps?   Who sees the lady all the way And taps the three of clubs? Who waits until the train arrives To cross the track for luck?

The pasture rolls a little, sweet and plain, perhaps a little boring. Herding cows ignore you. You unfold the map again: that blood still cakes the mouldboard of the plough. The Brabants' fusty sweat-steam in your eyes, you squint and hear the fragile thrum of cars along the A19, a crow describes a perfect arc. A burst of sunlight mars the clearest view you had of slender smoke. You stop mid-field, removed of shade and hope.

Time ’ s gravity drags. Try resisting. Look up at things appearing as real as any moving thing can be - defy their death. Rooms change when eyes shed tears; what if they welled, burst open windows, smashed down doors? I'd race upstream to breaking points and fix things. We hold on as we must, keep things that have occurred - things that followed all the rules; we know they only did what was allowed - like corpses, shaking them to kid ourselves they stirred, mapping them to re-engage the flow.

They start to appear, blobs of moss on rock. Then you realise you’ve passed them so many times and wonder who else sees them. Fresh bruises, cuts, florid skin splash colour on the London drab. You sense hierarchy: old guard decorated lividly, guttural. Lower ranks hang on every growl and new recruits - still in mufti - could be Salvationists but for those cans gripped like rifles. Unnerved by the one who stares just too long, you wrestle with your ugliness and maybe your call-up.

He waited and slammed on the pedal too late -  she checked her hair and pulled the trigger - he made the phone call - pushed the button -  signed the papers. Look at these acts stripped down to parts and wires, repeat the clich és,   gawk at geared outcomes, while everything thunders on reducing your concerns to this handful of words.

wait until the time comes choose a mood to be in twist the knife and then some wake to find a ruin

I've taken lots of late-career tribute acts and helped them see the paradox of seventy year old Lennons –  lean and creased like Jagger –  tired eyeball to eyeball with McCartney, washed up Yokos railing at Pepsi deals and fat LPs. Half a dozen sessions later they'll disband and retire on State Pension or take up jobs in DIY Stores, never again speaking of those years. In the Manager’s strip-lit office, clean, they gaze at past Employees of the Month and think of all that might have been.

in memoriam The Fallen at Omaha Kept hearing Piccadilly Circus  but didn't get it. London, right? I prayed for more storms. Didn't work: we got word. Not many slept except  the dumb and the godly. Noise. Some goofing off. Sarge let them have it. Off the transport. Down the nets. Into the LCVP.                             (...Higgins boat.) Jokes. I tried real hard, grinned till my jaw ached. Diesel choked my guts and I kept thinking: this is the good weather?  Elbows in ribs. Stinking breath. Some were still gung ho. Most went quiet. You hunker down. Sick and smokes. Mutterings to moms and sweethearts. I thought of mom for a spell, started to make out faces as Captain briefed us again. Close now, he said. Now the fear. Fear. Mouth dry as ash. Chalk sky gave no clue. Sea spray gave no clue. Faces gave no clue. Heartbeats gave no clue. Bow ramp descends and shows all...

Most of it flows past quite close but it can't bend towards you and you see it like those childhood parades blurred and saturated, too grown up to interest you. There's no need to push too far, what sticks will stick despite you and you'll feel it like those bedroom moments you've regurgitated many times to comfort you. Keep it like a charming ghost - it haunts but doesn't scare you - and you'll watch it fade from rose complexion, those to whom recounted ever less engrossed by you.

I will always have the wayward heart and the tear in my soul which runs along the seam but will not be ripped apart.                                     I will always circumvent the path to the mesh of fine parts which makes you how you are but will not reveal your truth.                                                                            I will always be the purest youth in the midst of the old which darkens every dream with that huge descending roof.

The paper was handed in awkward hush - a wodge folded like an accordion - my smile was ill-judged, but rather than run I floated towards the booth on the rush and unfurled the beast with veneration I'd normally save for a sacred tract; I gawped in awe at variety acts from loner kooks to the Robot Nation. I fixed on my cross in a cloud of fear: Had I moored my boat with Nasty McFoul? Reassured, I folded the inky towel and assumed my place in the Demosphere.

Cold, thin beams of night take care of your face - they glance off your bones, skin white as the moon. I ask if you might remember this place in twenty years' time; you say that's too soon.

The days we live start after and end long before all the days there are. Our days - enveloped by them - are sent to those we'll never know and most are lost in transit. The whole thing's like a box we can't quite get a hold of, not too heavy but just too big to grip.

You smile to see the clouds break which only means they bank like paint further along the sky, promising light and threatening dark at once, which might be a metaphor for the human condition or else reminder of the umbrella in the kitchen.

After dreams which would make Pieter Breughel fall ill I woke up today with a sense unassailable That as hard as I try and as strong as I will My attachment will steadfastly stay unavailable.

I want to fill the gaps in understanding not with words or thoughts but something different, something new which isn't noisy, doesn't clutter, cuts a path to something like solution, meaning, all the things to aim for, brings me close to what I hope is you. All the rest is cells and their components, all the rest is stumbling, reaching blind, drawing maps with empire-building frenzy, scoffing at the dark that's left behind. 

We all look like death. First Date breaks through skin, cracking up and coughing, checking everything when checking's all there is. We only see what's there and honeyed souls reside in pavement cracks. By all means weep, create a scene, but that, red eyes, is that.

We all look like death. First Date breaks through the skin, cracking up and coughing, checks everything until checking's all there is. We see only what's there and honeyed souls reside in pavement cracks. By all means weep, make melodrama, but that, red eyes, is that.

I made an error, sweet and true: compared my shambled self to you with all your wondrous purple prose, with all your quotes from works I chose to try and read when I was young, whose sentences I chewed too long until the taste had disappeared and meaning long since discohered [you see, I know that's not a word but must continue, undeterred.] You're less than half my age, you brute! How dare you flow, and cite, and loot my less-than-sturdy self-esteem? Like MLK I have a dream in which Young Turks and parvenus are more like me and less like you and cut their teeth at 22 instead of shining brightly through and I shall write, as critics cheer, a piece about a disco here.

With the flowers in full bloom - eyes smarting from pollen fogging the room - she wills the day over. For days she’s seen tomorrow as a stand-alone, no more that deep-breathing stranger on the phone. Clear lines, clean minds; she stays alert to the face at the window very soon. It feels wrong being in the midst neither of anticipation nor the blitz relief will bring when tomorrow arrives. She’s been everywhere but standing still. Memories and projections make her ill: bad thoughts, stock still. She writhes but can’t break free of the way time just sits. There’s no control in a photograph: no sounds, no hot and cold, no way to craft one moment seamlessly into the next. She’s dreamed in film all her life, knows the subtlety of shade from mum to wife and now, at last, she packs up everything she was into the tallest glass.

The hot gun moves through ice printing a perfect outline of itself, or else a legacy of change to solid uniform things - aspirational reminder of what they may become.