A Valentines day reposting, a short piece from my 2017 pamphlet – Clutches of Love. Introduction by Katya Lubarr. Image: thanks to el Senor Don Challissimo.
Probably Inappropriately
When you done your tantric kundalini kali-spell on me I was lost enveloped in psychic love-haze, I was drawn, rising, filling, swelling emotions that confused me and had in the past lead to casually fucking someone. Probably Inappropriately.
Warning bells went off somewhere in the distance and I felt us reflex, in unison, pull back, but stayed long hours, hung in giddy uneasy equilibrium, in circular psychedelic emanations, trident penetrates the sky.
Still. Still. Still. Waiting, while unseen proto-cosmic arousals reverberate the air, threatening to immanently unfold sudden into cataclysmic karmic collisions climaxing. Still. Still. Still.
So we lay down on the bed, fully-clothed in the dull downpour afternoon. Clasped in yogic breathing intensely staring deep into soul-eyes we sank down dipped below the surface entwined long time waiting. Did you call? Probably Inappropriately.
The photo on Leah’s post threw me. It really did, it bamboozled me and discombobulated and confused me. It was a vertical photo, almost certainly taken with a phone. A straight forward portrait orientation of a man, his head and shoulders in profile, he is unsmiling. It feels as if the man is posing, deliberately turning his face from the camera, purposely pretending he’s not being photographed. I got a palpable sense that the man was prevaricating, in profile, in portrait, or it was uncanny valley photoshopped.
But that wasn’t what shook me.
Visible behind the man is a muddy woodland path, leading off into distant damp water-logged winter crop fields, it is obviously somewhere South Eastern England. The man is wearing a dark beanie hat, it looks old. His coat is weathered. His face unshaven and blanched in the cold air. The lobes of his ears, poking out from under the hat, are ruddy with chill, both his eyes and his nose look runny.
The caption reads “Simon at the Beech Woods”.
But its not Simon, not the Simon I know, and that Simon doesn’t know Leah anyway.
It’s not Simon, it most certainly is Dan. Dan, Dan my ex-, Dan TEFL Dan, Dan in Japan, Dan.
But Leah doesn’t know Dan, in any case he’s in Japan, so why would he appear on Leah’s feed.
That was number one, the first of those things that come in threes.
I can’t decide if it’s good things or bad things that come in threes. I can’t decide if seeing Dan pretending to be Simon on Leah’s post is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just confusing. Do confusing things also come in threes?
The second thing was the Recidivist Philosopher Podcast. That’s the name of the series, I didn’t make it up, I don’t really know what it means, I don’t even know why I even went there, but I did.
The presenter was quite stunning, the moment I saw him I couldn’t look away. He had long curly blond hair, his eyes a blinding shade of blue, vibrant against his pale eyelashes and eyebrows. His mouth was wide, his soft pink lips could barely close over his big white perfect teeth.
But that wasn’t why I couldn’t look away.
He introduced every episode with “Greetings! I am the Recidivist Philosopher! This is my podcast. My name is Dirk”. But he wasn’t Dirk, I don’t even know anyone called Dirk. It was Simon, the Simon that wasn’t at the Beech Woods, the Simon who doesn’t know Leah, although he may know Dan in Japan.
It’s so confusing, because although it definitely was Simon, and he spoke with the same unbridled enthusiasm about all the same things he always spoke endlessly about – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Schiller and the rest – he didn’t speak in his normal louche Cumbrian drawl at all.
This Simon had a painfully cut-glass Home Counties accent, it was so posh it was a bit unbearable to listen to. It was so posh, super posh, like fake posh, it sounded how Jacob Rees Mogg looks, which is gruesome posh.
And although he certainly was Simon, in the podcast he wore his hair long and looked 20 years younger than he actually was, as if he’d made these podcasts when he was still young, before podcasts even existed. I hope Simon’s not dabbling in time travel.
It is so confusing, I can’t get my head around it. Especially since, the third thing of those things that come in threes hasn’t happened yet, so I’ve no way of knowing what to make of it all. I can’t for the life of me imagine what the third thing will be, or if I will even recognise it when it happens.
First, they took the newly- identified Leper to the burial ground and laid them in an empty grave, a Priest performed a Requiem Mass and earth was thrown onto the Leper’s head.
Then the whole Parish processed the Leper to her new home, where this Mass of Separation, spoken by a priest, was performed at the site of the leper’s hut.
“I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people.
I forbid you ever to leave your house without your leper’s dress, and also shod.
I forbid you to wash your hands or to launder anything or to drink at any stream or fountain, unless using your own barrel or dipper.
I forbid you to touch anything you buy or barter for, until it becomes your own.
I forbid you to enter any tavern; and if you wish for wine, whether you buy it or it is given to you, have it funneled into your keg.
I forbid you to share house with any woman but your wife.
I command you, if accosted by anyone while travelling on a road, to set yourself down-wind of them before you answer.
I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby might catch the affliction from you.
I forbid you, wherever you go, to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves.
I forbid you to touch any child or give them anything.
I forbid you to eat or drink from any dishes but your own.
I forbid you to eat or drink in company, unless with lepers.”
*****
I look out the open door of my hut at the grey morning rise. There is no sunrise, just grey.
I look out the door of my hut, open doors are good for dispelling miasma. Though I am charged to close my door if anyone comes near, and I must stay downwind, on account of the movement of miasma. I must ring my bell.
I am alone here, and that’s fine. It is hard to be alone, but easier than shuffling downwind or giving them leprosy. Giving them leprosy is the worst, even if it’s only the fear of leprosy.
I am alone here, Alice in her leper hut. Do I have a cat? Yes, I have a cat. Greymalkin, I call her.
And she isn’t afraid of lepers, no cats are. Lepers have rats and scraps, just like anyone. Why would a wise cat fear a leper.
I did not join the lepers in the Lazar House, I do not live in company in the Spital. I prefer it out here, beyond the fields of the Leper Hospital. Alone I watch from my leper hut, as the lepers work the strips of the Spital Fields.
There is a Leper Chapel at the side of the Spital, where the good lepers hear the mass. And there is a Lychnoscope, a Hagioscope, a Squint in the wall, where guilt-ridden towns people, leaving alms for the allieviation of the suffering of lepers, cross themselves and cross back into town.
I too have a squint, by the side of my door, I take alms in exchange for visions. I am a leper, and so closer to death, for me the veil is thin, I can see those who will die within a year, and those who are already dead.
In the autumn when the lepers have brought in the leper harvest, and the fields are bare, the town set up a fair on the Spital Fields, trading and gaming and whoring, late into the nights.
And they queue at my closed door, when the fair is in the Spital Field, Parish people wait in turn at my Squint. They pay me alms for visions, to spy out the dead and soon to die, I see them all with my leper eye.
In those autumnal nights when the raucous crowds are thronging, out there I see you, Dodie Disease-Monger and Lizzie Leper-Maker, drunk on sack, skirts hitched high, dancing in the stubble. I see you, I know you and your works. You eyed me, now I eyeball you.
Return the evil to the evil-doer.
You are in the leper’s vision, now I see you with my leper eye.
There is a chapel hardby the Spital where the good lepers hear mass. But I stay away, I am a leper and worse, for I am a leper with visions. I see my own demon gods in the dark of my leper hut.
Recent recording of a piece I first posted a year ago.
Unexpected in October – recorded reprise – Eulogy for Scott
If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place. Some day soon the winter will fall, but this afternoon in this garden the sky is still clear and brazen blue, the wind still rustles in the leaves not yet turned and birds chatter on in deep greenery, insects still flutter in dappled shade. The sun still warms my face, the grass still growing under my feet, a squirrel climbs to the highest waving branches where glossy green ivy leaves entwine, waiting for the year to pass on. I close my eyes, a tranquil moment for the dead and dying, held in trance-like waiting, the sun still calls my eyes to the sky. I don’t want to lose this moment, I don’t want to go indoors, but the chill air rising creeps up my spine, a flying crow caws overhead, the wonder is breaking, broken by a growling jet that cuts the sky in two. Some day soon the winter will fall again, but now, today, this afternoon in this garden, summer still lingers on, and hope is still strong. If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place.
It vaguely caught my eye a couple of times and I thought it was one of tribe of black crows with white-flecked wings that inhabit my street. But it wasn’t, it was just a discarded black bin bag enjoying a bit of freedom in the Bin Day afternoon.
I think the crows are naturally black, but are developing white flecks on their wings. The crows are turning white, feather by feather. This colour change is possibly due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, leading to loss of the melatonin in the feathers. Of course the creatures are malnourished, they are urban crows, they are surviving on trash, eating from bin bags. Left over ultra processed ready meal gobets and soiled cat litter pickings a plenty.
From my window I have watched the crows dunking cigarette butts into puddles to rid them of their paper skin, then gobble down the puddle soaked filters like a delicacy.
Then it catches my eye again. The free range black bin bag in the street shudders across the road, like a flurry of ferrets, back and forth in the wind.
And again, contorting into a hunched half torso straddling the white line down the middle of the tarmac.
Wet grey rainy bin day, twilight afternoon midwinter, the crows warily eye a stray black plastic bin bag waddle to the kerb, finally settling down in the form of a metalic grey arrow headed dragon child, curled in the shade of next doors toyota, his squamous wings and gills rhymically fluttering in his sleep.
His nickname was Rimmer, sometimes just Rim. I don’t know why he was called that, thankfully I only met him a couple of times.
The first time was when his girlfriend invited me out for a coffee. The girlfriend’s nickname was Moomy, I only went the once. I only went the once because Moomy simply couldn’t stop talking, speaking loudly and rapidly, barely comprehensible in her non-native English. I don’t know what was wrong with her to be so aggravatingly and pointlessly vocal, some said it was an undiagnosed mental illness, I think it was cocaine. To be honest, she did look like a cokehead, and she was self-absorbed, overbearing and boring enough to be on cocaine.
Anyway, Moomy invited me out for a coffee through the friend of a friend, and she brought Rimmer along because he couldn’t be left on his own at home, I don’t know why. Moomy was relentless, rambling, arse-achingly dull. Every once in a while Rimmer, whose voice was booming and plonky, would start pontificating himself, like when one disturbed barking farm-dog sets off all the others aroundabouts. Moomy would indulge Rimmer a little, allowing him to run his mouth for a few minutes, then she would shut him down “No minding if him, he just autistico” she would shout and continue with her own tediously incoherent monologuing.
I never went for coffee with them again, between them they made me feel socially violated.
It took me a week to wash them out of my head.
The only other time I spent with Rim Rimmer was when Moomy had flown home to have her anal glands expressed, I think that’s what she said. She said “I cannot NHS fucking stupid. In my country dentist make all anal glands for sixty euro. In this fucking country NHS you wait five years on list for down there is same relief. I no fucking wait for NHS. I go my own country is better than fucking England.”
So Moomy was away for a month or so and she was furiously messaging my friend to visit Rimmer, have drinks with him and check he was okay. The friend, horrified at the thought of spending a whole evening alone with Rim had insisted I come along too.
We arrived at Rimmer and Moomy’s flat as late as politely possible, he showed us to the sofa, and quickly poured us what he called “cocktails” pink gin and tonic in full pint glasses, it looked like he was going to really stretch the evening out. “There’s more where that came from, plenty of drinking here” He shouted as he sat himself down at his computer desk, his chair back facing us. The interesting thing about Rim was, that without the controlling influence of Moomy’s constant verbalising, he himself was an insufferable monologing bore. For two hours, which is when we finally managed to get away, Rimmer spoke incessantly into his computer screen, although I think he thought he was talking to us. The first thing he said was “Back in the day we would make proper cocktails, we made molotovs and let them off in bus shelters”. My mind was boggling, I wish now that I’d been recording him on my phone, then I could be sure of what he actually said. Anyway, here is my undoubtedly unreliable recounting of his speech.
Back in Barn Hill where he grew up, a village outside the city, the teenage Rimmer and his school chums regularly raided a disused factory where there were abandoned explosives. They would drain jam jars full from pierced steel drums of unspecified flammable fluids, priming them with readily available noxious household poisons. They would combine and mix and prime and refine these little glass bombs, then they would take them to bus shelters at night and put a match to them. Rimmer’s friends would crouch in safety behind the bus shelter glass, while he would boldly ignite the jam jars and run. Sometimes the explosions were terrific, shaking the bus shelter to it foundations, sometimes the young men were deafened, ears ringing and leaking blood for days, sometimes he barely got behind the safety glass before the detonation. And sometimes nothing at all happened, and they would walk back home, despondant, leaving the dangerous jam jars behind in the bus shelter for children and dogs to find the next day.
And that is The Passing Tale of Rimmer and Moomy, and why I hope to never see them again.
The flash fiction below was first published as an honourable mention on the flash fiction website Short Tale Shrew back in 2016.
Film Night at The Rebirth Convention
Body Limits – Bella Basura 2023. Photograph taken at Marina Abramovic exhibition at The Royal Academy
The Delegates gathered, waiting for the ‘Samsara in Cinema’ event. Ouspensky sat broodingly alone, contemplating Ivan Osokin. A few rows behind him The Gautama and The Christ boisterously contrasted resurrection and soul-migration. In a hot-tub, left of the screen, naked therapists breath-worked their birth-traumas. Classically reincarnated deities – Mithras, Persephone, Taliesin, Vishnu, Baldur – sat rapt as the houselights dimmed. The crowded auditorium hushed as the diminutive figure of the Dalai Lama edged onto the stage. “My favourite film” He said simply. And the screen sprang into life, illuminating the film’s title “Groundhog Day”.
If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place. Some day soon the winter will fall, but this afternoon in this garden the sky is still clear and brazen blue, the wind still rustles in the leaves not yet turned and birds chatter on in deep greenery, insects still flutter in dappled shade. The sun still warms my face, the grass still growing under my feet, a squirrel climbs to the highest waving branches where glossy green ivy leaves entwine, waiting for the year to pass on. I close my eyes, a tranquil moment for the dead and dying, held in trance-like waiting, the sun still calls my eyes to the sky. I don’t want to lose this moment, I don’t want to go indoors, but the chill air rising creeps up my spine, a flying crow caws overhead, the wonder is breaking, broken by a growling plane that cuts the sky in two. Some day soon the winter will fall again, but now, today, this afternoon in this garden, summer still lingers on, and hope is still strong. If I can make a landscape for a dream, let it be this place.
This is a reprinting from The Short Answer pamphlet from 2016. “A chapbook of Drabbles – a dozen short fictions of 100 words”.
I decided to reprint this one after having an afternoon of wandering around drinking teas in cafes in town with my lovely friend, Munizha Ahmad-Cooke. Munizha said this is one of her favourites from The Short Answer chapbook.
Turn The Page
Golden Vaguenes – Bella Basura 2016
Unspeakable beauty, like the floating harmonic deep in keening tinnitus. Words break free, and my sentence struggles away from me, my grasp slipping a grip, like a hand slipping a glove. She tears from my skin and flies. Ricocheting my awareness of “I” into a bounding and rebounding silence. A silent creeping vibration, like the tap-tap tapping of a solitary black widow on her dew-luminous web, alone at night. A fly has slipped it’s shackles and fled. A silent creeping vibration of voidness, null, empty and zero. The one that got away.
Waking early, he groaned inwardly, he hated Sundays. Sundays always meandered, everything went late, still, shut or slow.
And as usual, his larder was empty, he needed to go shopping. A trip to the local supermarket was always a trial, but on a Sunday! Phew! No thanks!
For a start, they never opened til ten, hours to go. And then, the crowds, the Sunday shopping crowds, they did his fragile head in no end.
Dragging around the kitchen in his pajamas, he searched the cupboards again. Still nothing. Just ¾ bottle of home-brand red, a mouthful of brandy and four hash truffles he’d bought for his birthday, but hadn’t yet found anybody to share them with. He poured the Brandy into the wine, took one hash truffle and went back to bed.
Perhaps he could get back to sleep til the shops opened.
Within an hour the munchies had driven him back to the kitchen. Rummaging through the empty cupboards. In blood-sugar free-fall he scoffed another of the hash truffles.
Then another
Sugar sugar sugar!
Then he scoffed the last one, went back to bed.
On a whim, he climbed out of bed, put on his coat and shoes, he decided to walk the streets till the shops opened. He was munchie-ravenous, but maybe a walk would help.
At the Pelican Crossing at the end of his street, he pushed the button and waited. Slow tailbacks of Sunday drivers clogged the road, inching in both lanes of the Ring Road, into and out of the city. He waited.
Slowly at first, then with increasing urgency his attention was drawn into a big blue SUV stopped at the lights. The car seems implausibly big, large and it began to fill his vision with its impenetrable blueness. He felt he was falling into it, into a midnight blue night sky. It took a huge effort of will to pull his eyes away from the overarching hugeness of the SUV’s blue bonnet. He dragged his eyes upwards towards the windscreen. There was a woman at the steering wheel, she had an implausibly huge head, a huge blue head.
The crossing lights changed to green, but he stayed, entranced by the blue headed woman, trying not to stare.
The lights changed back.
He waited, transfixed in ignoring blue.
With deliberate dispassionate curiosity he allowed his attention to focus on the woman’s huge blue head, and decided it was the woman’s hair that was blue, the same blue as the car. Quickly he closed his eyes. Too much. He switched his eyes to the pelican crossing lights, he waited.
The Lights changed, the green walking-man blinked. Repeatedly tearing himself away from the blue vision machine, he stepped into the road. Halfway across the lights changed “Don’t Cross” screamed in his ears and he beat a hasty retreat back to the kerb. He suddenly felt he was trapped, like in the Pink Panther Cartoon – Think Before You Pink! He thinks the Blue Lady in the blue car with blue punky hair glared at him, telepathically. He suspects she has an animosity towards pink and in particular the Pink Panther, her being so blue and all.
But it meant he was psychologically prepared when the green-man lit up again. He skipped into the road
Halfway across the lights changed, green man extinguished. But he didn’t get mown down like the Pink Panther because the ring road traffic was gridlocked and nothing moved.
He slid into the supermarket.
By now he was swimming in a sugar-philic haze, the cakes in the supermarket bakery seemed sentient, calling out to him. Perhaps latching onto the munchie-mania that seemed to surround him, like a famished aura.
In the street again, trudging with 5p carrier bags stuffed with red warning label sugar, fat , carbohydrate snacks, he crossed the Pelican crossing without pushing the button or waiting for the green man, he just stepped into the road.
But he didn’t get mown down because the ring road traffic was gridlocked and nothing moved. The blue SUV with the woman with matching blue head is still there. But the car now is kind of green-ish and the woman is wearing a hat, a huge silly green hat.
Bella Basura online 