QUART FESTIVAL NORWAY:

At the dark & lonely breakfast there’s an old blonde in a
Hard Rock t-shirt sat alone at a table. She’s cuts something
vigorously, scanning the room hopefully. Across the road,
sculls & crossbones dance in the window of a bleak building.
Old people laugh at each other’s jokes.
There’s nothing appetising on the buffet. I improvise with a
pile of seed, but where’s the milk & which of these buttons
do you press for hot water? All the chairs are silver & brown
velveteen. All the tables are fake marble & chrome.
The old blonde acquires an old grey geezer in leather trousers.
No one greets me or asks for my number. I’m left to drift around
the buffet, dazed, ignored, avoided, except for the woman
in the little white linen hat & crisp kitchen apron who smiles
at me from behind the pancakes. They glow, rosy & inviting,
warming under heat lamps, wrapped in blankets.
I find a quiet table near a window, craving light. A chandelier
of Brown hangs in the centre of the room dripping in fake Brown
jewels, a memory of a time I’d rather forget. Lilies explode
from a crack in an aggressive piece of pottery blocking what little
light tries to limp in through my window. I stab a slice of fruit,
wake up my mouth with the first hit of juice, delivered on the
prongs of a ragged silver fork.
The old blonde & her guy talk to each other in sign language.
A bloke appears & clears my debris in a language I don’t understand.
Head bowed, eyes down, from a long way out of town. A phone rings
like a strummed guitar. There is no music, only random violent noises
from the kitchen drummers. The salt & pepper eye each other with
hard stares. The tooth picks huddle together in fear. A cold white
knife lies alone on a cold white plate dreaming of somewhere else.

(K)