An Unexpected Surprise

"Who's handwriting is that?"

"Don't know." My Dad took the envelope from my mum and turned it in his hands. "It doesn't look much like a card. That's not a Birthday card envelope."

He handed it to me. It wasn't weighted and it was flexible. This time of year I received cards by the bucket, it's all a part of having a large family, and each one had an identifiable hand writing. There's the coarseness of my Grandmother on my Mother's side, then there's the fairytale flick of my Auntie on my Father's side who also writes the cards from my their mother. While I'm normally oblivious to all of this, this particular card had peeked my attention.

"Should I open it?" It was ten days until my birthday and opening cards prematurely was sacrilege in this household.

"I don't think it's a birthday card." Mum said over the whistling of the Kettle.

So I ran my fingers under the corner, that childish excitement  filling me as the paper tore apart. My eyes lit up as I saw inside.

***

The pub was homely but new, the furnishings still crisp and clean, the hand dryers still so powerful they could burn the hands they might dry. It was friendly, the service was impeccable, from the specials to the wine list and the banter at the table they were brilliant. I ordered a bottle of Chablis and tried to explain grape varieties and regions to my Nanna. She concentrated hard but eventually gave up, turning to my brother and asking him about his school. My Granddad, jovial as ever gibed me on, "Tastes like grapes."

I shook my head in mock dismay and then my Dad joined in.

"I'm getting . . ." He rolled the glass under his tongue ". . . pissed."

My brother then broke from his conversation to remind my Dad he wasn't Lee Mack and that joke wasn't funny the last three times he had told it, in the same situation, possibly at the same table.

The waitress came over and cleared the coffee's and my Granddad took the bill. He laughed and joked with the waitress and flirted a little, he was so alive. Come the end of it he tipped generously and the poor girl had been lumped with some promotional offer and handed it over to me.

"There y'are, Lad. You're the expert." And he put his arm around me and I realised he wasn't mocking me at all. I felt the pride in the weight of that arm and took the little quiz from his other. I filled in my details.

***

The image washed over me. The front of the Fox and Goose. Inside just Happy Birthday and some printed offers on the back. My Granddad might as well have put the card in my hand himself, my head flushed. It was almost a year since I had said goodbye, but he still wasn't saying it back.

Funny isn't it really, how a simple thing like being nice to a waitress, can come back and reward you in a way you never thought of. You don't get anything for free. In life you get what you give. Thanks Granddad. That's one lesson I'll never forget.

Moonlight Serenade

The door was locked.  Whoever was screaming was now beyond Emma’s help.  She beat the door until her wrists ran crimson, her arms ached and tears streamed from her eyes.  She yelled and cried but the screaming never ceased, it rang in her ears only getting louder with each passing cry.  Emma beat her head against the door and fell against it exhausted.  The screaming continued and all Emma did was cry in to her hands.  What else could she do?

She woke. Her eyes stung and throat ached.  Her voice was gone.  Emma couldn’t hear the screaming. The silence didn’t calm her any though, all she could think about was that noise, the visceral penetration; she could hear it, like tinnitus, ever lingering, never leaving.  She shook violently and tried to stand but her knees buckled under her.  She might have cried had she the tears left to produce.  She needed to know what happened but the quiet little girl that lay before the girl had not the strength nor will to twist the handle and push in to the chaos.  So she crawled away. . .

The curtain’s break allowed the moonlight to serenade the broken young girl.  She shivered and convulsed in a pile on the enveloping mahogany floor, consumed by the night.  She might still weep.

Hours later the sun gently caressed Emma’s face.  The bids outside seemed to be singing Barber’s strings.  The door handle turned and Emma twitched, her breath heaved and she sighed, still asleep.  The warmth teased open her eyes.  She lay holding on to something.  She couldn’t know what it was, soft, comfortable. A pillow.

The door opened and Emma walked in.  All emotion washed away from her face.  The sun fell over two figures both lying on their backs in the bed, on the bed side table were medicine.  The woman’s medicine.  Emma’s mothers medicine, she thought.  Her father’s eyes were open but he couldn’t greet her that morning.  Her mother rested peacefully more so than she had been in years.  The bed sheets didn’t moved.  Only when Emma leant against them.  Emma kissed her mother’s blue lips.  She held her father’s cold hands.

Three days later they found her there.  In between her two most treasured loved ones.  The sunlight still warming her stone skin.

Morning Rituals

The clouds hung, low and grey, not daring to disturb the concrete landscape.  The floor vibrated; the chair, the walls, the ceiling, the very earth vibrated.  The world was washed out, we rattled past.  She clung on to her phone, as did each other member of society under the age of thirty then excluding the small thing in the pram, she attempted conversation.

“You read it?”

“No.” I was affixed to the tiny four inch screen held a foot from my face.  “Should I have?”

“You didn’t miss much.”  Jess was typing at the same time, this was a practiced conversation, one of us will have done the required work for the day and is required to tell the other that they didn’t need to read it and in fact cliff notes will suffice.  The Lecturer clearly agreed, despite her protestations, but if the lecturer can use cliff notes in the lecture slides and we can reference lecture slides, then we must be allowed to reference cliff notes.  The argument didn’t even hold up while it was running through my head.

Around the bus everybody was in the same situation.  All wishing for conversation and not knowing how to go about it.  There are no emoticons in reality, we have to attempt facial expressions.  That’s easier said than done at 7am on a Friday.

It was one of those irritating people that broke through the rumbling of the bus.  One of those morning people.

“My mum ate so many Pringles she had to go to hospital.”

A Love Letter

To the Wildest of us,

Once we took a walk,
Over green grass and under white clouds.
Arm in arm and through the park
Your face alight from laughter, so proud
he might have been to see us there.
He might have smiled upon us then.

The wind lashed that spring
but the sun that beat wouldn't be beat.
Do you remember? Is it too soon?
Do your cheeks still fill with heat?
What he might do to see us here.
He would smile upon us then.

We ate our soup, the three of us.
The dawn, the noon, the dusk.
It mattered little, the hollow mask
that, across our faces, painted smiles.
He could have sat with us there.
He might not smile upon us then.
If he was with us ever at all.


Now I don't see you often enough
and the time dwindles and the candles flicker
in the wind and rain.
I don't tell you often enough
I don't know if I have ever told you before
I don't know if there are the words to say
I don't know if you could hear them,
Each day a moment passes and you are with me
You will never read this and my heart breaks
like the first footfall on a frozen lake.
The surface breaks.

The day will come where this will need to be heard
Yet you will not have the ears to hear it.
I could read it now yet you could not comprehend it.
Just knowing this my heart breaks.

So simply I must vow
To tell you each and every day
in my own and special way
that "I love you".
And I remember that day
and each and every other day
That your smile told me you loved me.
Because I know
He would smile upon us then.

Your Loving Friend

Handing in my notice

I quit.
The hours are too long and unsociable
I never have time for myself
I spend all of my hours trying to please another
and for what?
Well they turn around
they look me in the eye
Lovingly
They spit in my face
They look in to someone else’s eyes
Lovingly

I’m done.
I don’t need this, the pay is crap
All of the things I want to do
Maybe if I quit I’ll be able to take up some.
I always wanted to be a rockstar
I can’t play a note
Or maybe a model
If I was a little taller
Or maybe a pilot
If I was a little smarter.

I’m handing in my notice.
In two weeks I give up.
You wont be seeing me around.
Hell! I wouldn’t come back here even if I had a choice!
Hell! At least it’s warm there.

To whom it may concern.
Don’t pretend like you’re surprised
The way you treat me!
You walk all over me and then I wash off the footprints
You walk all over me again
You walk all over me.

One day you might look back at this and think:
He was a good lad
always tried his hardest
more than to be said of most.

I’ll work my last two weeks
I’ll work it with a smile
I’ll work it with a skip in my step
Knowing it is my last two weeks.

The world’s Last Barman Poet

The French Martini

She stares across three feet of polished oak,
Her eyes belie the truth that hides inside
And yet she flirts and tells those practiced lies
he pays the bill and tips but she is mine.
I shake, caress the frost upon the glass
I pour, she tastes the perfect orgasm.
She fights temptation, perfect elation
I know my bed will be kept warm tonight.
Society’s spirit surrounding us,
Impassioned poisons pass between our lips.
In drunken lust, we screw, we drink, I drive.
Home alone, even Bacchus might be proud
I down the beer and pop another Z
Tomorrow, another day awaits me.

Blanc De Blanc

Empty, I don’t much feel like a poet
Expression is lie, translation is lie
Liquid courage slips in to my hollow
body and I allow myself a thought.
I struggle to sleep for having met her,
I cannot breath while she will not be mine
and yet, if never our paths diverged
If I had took the road less travelled by
perhaps she could still occupy my mind?
The wandering woman in white might walk
Across the frozen wastes, explore the vast
Hollow iceberg that contemplates myself.
But is she who she truly seems to be
Or just a shadow, not the one I dream.

Disarrono Chaser

The bottle runs dry – her hand is on mine,
musical notes played on the harp of her laugh.
Lips so close, only a moment apart
her warmth, her body, her hypnotic gaze
I know she’s mine, she must be mine.
The reigns pull tighter, why try to escape?
The moment lingers, the moment we touch
The lonely moment, a moment of love.
Or lust - I taste her, so sweet, so gentle,
Tongues dancing to a samba so sensual.
I am inside her, she’s in my soul
Her eyes close in passions powerful prose,
This is her art, her heart, all that she knows.
She gathers her things and walks out the room
I know this meant nothing -
nothing at all.

The Collector

Smoke hung over the sludge covered marshes. A dense black blanket of soot concealing death and disease. In that fog, hidden in darkened clouds, a carriage lurched forward. Mechanical cranes hanged over each side of the carriage; hawk-like talons mounted on each tip.  Gears ground against each other as one claw craned down to collect its prize.  The iron beast was oiled and dented by bullets and falling debris, but it did not falter.  Fantastically sturdy machines they were; capable of withstanding the full force of an enemy barrage and still keeping on task.  The Collector's ventilators glowed gentle and golden and an it released an outward breath of smoke as it kept it's pace.  Rifleman and ballistics ran forward on either side of the machine. It continued onwards, ignorant.  The machine found its next collectable and, mechanically, lifted the body, rotated the crane and then lowered the body, placing it in a perfect line to the others. The Collector sighed in satisfaction.

The hollow crack of a cannon.

The Collector, kept on it's steady march.  It didn’t notice the darkness, the quilt of grey that swept over the skies or the fog so thick a human couldn’t see more than 10 feet ahead.  The Collector hadn’t noticed that, although it had been working for over 8 days without a pause, the sun had not once broken through those clouds.  The Collector didn’t realise when day turned to night, and when the temperature dropped, did not feel the frost building in it's joints.  The Collector was content in its duty.

The Collector came to a stop.  The ground ahead was slick from warfare.   Where crops and fertile land once lay, instead a monument to the dead blanketed these fields. The rain pounded down and the Collector ached in its joints.  The Collector’s back wheel spun.  The muddy field had caught the collector.  The weather had softened the ground and, with the lack of an engineer, the Collector would likely rust and burn out here.  Machines can be stubborn though.  The engine glowed through the ventilator; at first red, then white with the heat.  The pistons inside pounded and the Collector pushed as hard it could.  The wheel spun deeper.  The machine pushed a crane arm down to one side and tried to steer its way forward, it pressed the claw down as far as it could reach, but it was only consumed in the marshland.  The machine sat still.

The battle roared all around the iron giant.  The battle carriages, carrying the heavy ballistics marched forward in line.  Stop, volley, reload, march, stop, volley, reload, march . . . the routine was endless.  Each of them were accompanied by a whole regiment of engineers, yet none of the prized soldiers could be spared for the cadaver collectors.  The collectors were unimportant. They were made to clear a battle field and rid it of disease.  Each of the collectors doubled as incinerators, suicide engines.  Many were just sent in to enemy lines and allowed to burn as hot as they could.  Only if they began to rust though.  The few who made it back from battle were broken up for parts and the parts that held cargo were just melted down.  They were insignificant.

The Collector fired up once more as though it might have been contemplating its own fate.  As it pushed and jutted and bodies fell around him a young infantryman running behind took cover.  The young man couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age but his eyes looked wearied.  Twenty meant he had at least three years of experience by now, and he wasn’t dead, not yet.  His hands quaked around his clock-load rifle.  The rain poured down his helmet, he wiped his brow clean and the sight of the Collector came in to full view.  He nodded his head a moment.  In three years, the infantryman had never come this close to a collector in the field.  The bodies were not visible within the machine. ‘Out of sight out of mind,’ he thought.  But still it was an undeniable piece of equipment built for one specific purpose; the rancid odour surrounding the machine gave that purpose away, it went so far as to even penetrate his gas mask.  The putrid smell of a dead mans flesh.  The machine was three times the size of a war horse and at least four times the length.  The great cranes mounted on the side were powerful weapons in their own right and the private wondered why on earth they were only used for collecting corpses.  He removed his helmet for a moment and attempted to dry himself off while the machine tried to gain its footing once more.

"That’s it keep pushing, Comrade." said the private, half to the machine, half to himself.  The machine lunged forward again, but to no avail.

The private looked up and chuckled.  The machine pushed hard.  The Private composed himself and turned to the machine, “Good luck.”  He turned and ran out in to the enemy fire, keeping his head down and rifle forward.  He only made it twenty yards. 

A blast.  

The world went silent.  A gust of wind took the private from his feet and back towards the Collector.  The Collector's crane reached around and the Private, nudged it away, “Not yet, Comrade.”  The Claw hovered mid-air.  The private thought it might still chuck him in with the rest, so pushing himself to his knees, he turned towards the enemy.  A volley of fire flew straight at the young infantryman, he’d given himself away.  Shot after shot after shot, then, almost simultaneously, the tin clank of bullets ricocheting off a sheet of iron.  The Collector had saved him.

The private looked on in astonishment.  He rallied himself and, with determination in his voice, spoke. “Wait here!”

The collector did so as the young private ran off, behind it.

It sat in quiet.  The battle had left him behind.  It was somewhere ahead now.  The cries of men and women might have been heard, if the Collector had the ears to hear them.  The glowing embers of a city on fire might have been seen, but the Collector didn’t have the eyes to see it.  The machine simply sat for a while, fired up its engine to move, failed to do so, and sat for a while longer.  Hours passed.

Three soldiers approached the machine.  They weren’t wearing the Prussian colours, they were polish.  Two of the three held their rifles ready, the third reached in to his leather pouch and pulled out a wrench wired to his pack.  The engineer lowered his goggles, wandered over to the machine and lit a mechanism on the wrench.  A small white flame jumped in to life.  The infantry man kept their eyes open and their backs to the Collector.  The engineer brought the torch to the back ventilator, his thick hide cloves partially protecting him from the heat.  He removed the ventilator and reached inside.  He was there only a moment.  ‘Nie!’ shouted the engineer and pulled his hand sharply free as the engine fired up.  He jumped down from the rear, wheel vault, he had used as a step, and moved to the other side.  ‘Tu!’ He yelled and the infantry men followed.

From the other side, the ventilator was higher and not so easily reachable.  

The engineer removed his pack and found a claw and rope.  He attached it to a brace on his left arm and the engine mechanism in his pack glowed.  The claw shot from his arm, found its way just left of the ventilator and pierced a hole in the iron walls.  A thick red trickled from the hole in the carriage.  The engineer hauled himself up.  He relit his wrench and tinkered with the ventilator cover, then pried it loose with a small dagger.  Once again he reached inside.

As he did this a bullet whistled through the air.  A small burst from the helmet of one of the infantry.  A volley of fire.  Three Prussian infantryman and a mechanic charged forward, followed by the returning private.  Before the Polish infantryman could raise his rifle the men were upon him, the first bayonet was knocked aside but only as the second penetrated his chest.  The Collector roared in to life, knocking the engineer down to the soft earth.  His feat slipped from under him. The Private launched himself forward as the engineer rolled under the carriage.  The darkness took him out of sight.  The infantryman fanned out around the carriage looking for the Enemy.  The Prussian mechanic jumped at the rope and pulled himself up to the ventilator, he tinkered a moment inside, re-affixed the cover and patted the machine.  He jumped down and started to gather the bodies of the men by the side of the entrenched carriage.

The infantrymen had the under carriage surrounded.  They paced and waited for a trace of light.  “Comrade!” Shouted the private “There is no escape, throw out your arms and we’ll not harm you.”

He paused a moment.  Then, a sound.  From below the carriage, the Engineer stirred.  A jet of flames escaped the under belly.  One of the Infantrymen yelled in agony as the flames licked his skin and cartridges exploded from his belt.  He fled, flailing and fading in to the chaos of war. 

The remaining men rounded themselves together and unloaded their rifles in to the dark.  The clockwork cartridges reloading the rifle barrels automatically. An explosion from the engineers pack sent the men flying and the Collector jumped. The machine found its footing as the dead men fell under wheel.

The Collector's exhaust released a puff of black smoke and the carriage sighed back in to its mission.  The private and picked himself up with the other men.  He wandered over to the machine and rest his hand on the side.  “There you are, Comrade.”

The infantry men had already run off ahead with the mechanic.  The private turned to do the same, he lowered his head and left for battle.

The hollow crack of a cannon.

The Collector continued to lurch and groan forward.  It came across a private, face down in the dirt, only 20 years old and battle worn.  Blood soaked his shirt and coat.  The Collector stopped alongside him.  His arm hung over the body for a short while.  The machine rested it's enormous claw gently on the privates back and sighed. The Collector made it's collection.