AN INFESTATION OF TINY HELICOPTERS:
Faster than tears this one’s not stopping, dressed in white optimism.
Glances across the backs of headrests in shades. sunlit faces,
sunlit beards. What’s that stain, it gets too noisy? A bird on a stick
in low eternal flight over a cornfield, creaks. Mumbling wires vibrate
in a breeze, blood flowers raise their heads above wild summer grass
to glimpse the sun.
Kiss me quick. Don’t get upset.
Listening to:
(K)
05:15:
Out in the early sun, radio on, working out under an open sky.
Blue, Birds, Bees & the raspberry hum of low flying prop planes.
Before the world come knocking.
(K)
THE DIFFERENT SUNDAY:
Shockingly no art, no music, no writing (discount this).
All work plans set aside. Family was handed the keys to
drive my precious time. Shock horror you say,
a work day lost, but what a fabulous day at no extra cost.
(K)
EVERYBODY LEFT:
Alone is a weird place, even when it’s not exactly real.
An imagined state brought on by the leaving of everybody.
I never was one for alone.
(K)
LIFE GOES ONE:
You’re a teabag, forget it. Don’t just lie there oozing tea
on a cold white plate, leaving a stain. There’s a crack in the
clouds & it’s getting wider. A big white bird gliding over the
rooftops, wings out wide, facing into the wind.
(K)
LEAVING KRISTIANSAND:
I tried to write to you, honest, but the lap top wouldn’t talk
to the airport at the airport.
(K)
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)
HAVEN’T NOT WRITTEN NOTHING TO SAY?:
I open the notebook, The Alwych ‘with the all weather cover’,
nothing. No words, just a stain where altitude squeezed the ink
out of my pen, a Lamy, white in remembrance of the Pentels
I used for decades until they stopped making them. They were
perfect, never leaked on planes & gave me at least two weeks notice
they were on their way out. I was forced into using fountain pens,
now I prefer them, like the way the nib rides over the surface
of the paper, the thick & thin of lines as they loop & how they
sings to my synaesthetic ear.
See the stain on the page, a duck’s foot shadow crossing three feint
blue lines. I close the book, notice a small piece of sticky white
something adhered to the cover, take a closer look. It’s a piece of
security wrist band from Bratislava, a memory of goods times &
sheltering in the back of a black Mercedes at the height of a wild
electric storm. I open the book again, hoping the duck’s foot will
have transformed into words, nope.
(K)
WHOSE SCRAMBLED BODY IS THIS EGG?:
Hung-over, mashed, folded, scattered, ravaged, crumpled, twisted.
A sausage skin with a limp.
Pack a bag, spooning porridge & answering phones.
Morning meetings on the move, body permanently craving food.
A dry mouth, a white knuckle mantra behind the wheel,
‘Lord remove these emotions, facial expressions & let only sweet
stuff escape this rabid mouth’.
In the sanctuary of studio all day, rick, black tea, guitar, two
voice chanting harmony. Sawdust tongue dodging phone calls.
Remain calm, breath, meet you at the airport.
Hands shake, fingers tremble, dizzy behind the eyes.
(K)
BRATISLAVA NEON FESTIVAL:
Hand made ice creams, street roasted meats, hillocks of marinaded
olives & mountains of fabulous cheese languish in the cruel heat
of a day of national celebration. The Kings & Queens of
Austro – Hungarian history parade, represented by out of work
actors sweating under the weight of heavy period costume for
bemused tourists with phones on sticks. The furnace mutates into
a muggy night between the trees on the edge of town, a cool sudden
breeze turns damp & chill. The sky erupts, electric, the dancing
stops, the storm rolls in & on. Voices raised in unison call our
name, hands raise in the air, faces illuminate, smiles, laughter,
joy as we prep the stage at 1:00am & the first kick drum drops,
dealing adrenaline. It’s all that’s keeping me going as the
body is again denied it’s right to catch colds or complain about
the abuse I’m giving it. Bed at 03:30, up at 06:30, another plane
is waiting.
(K)
Karl Hyde 