Passing movements on a crowded street
people pushing passed
me? I am sleep-walking in a haze
of Twilight, forgotten, with broken
moments that come and go
as my thoughts do, come and go,
waiting my turn in the queue
for a package of fame
as I work the type-writer
Into a frenzy of noise.
Swimming with fishes
by Adam Parry.
We all went for breakfast to Dobbie’s at the top of Lang
Stracht. I must admit I expected the breakfast to be better than it was, but basically,
I left most of it on the plate and I left the others and wandered about the
cavernous shop and in time happened upon the room full of aquariums. I could’ve
stayed for hours, or maybe it was days my emotions ranged from how beautiful to
a lonely despair because I wanted to set them free, but knew however they’d
probably die in the river, or the sea or whatever water in released them into.
There was such a variety of colour and shapes and a part of me wanted to be a
beautiful fishy in my tank, and I tried to imagine what it would be like then
wondered if there was a fish looking out wanting to be me. I doubted it and
went to find my family my ears popping with the bends and I bought a book I did
not read; some cat food the cat didn’t want and an indoor tree I didn’t water
got back into the back seat of the car thinking if wishes were fishes, then I’d
be three.
The sun was shining when they dropped me off and I knew
wishes weren’t fishes for if they were I’d be standing where I’d been, and be
standing there now instead of looking out this window drowning in this air.
She was filled with intense relief, she went to the mirrored
cabinet in the bathroom and left, one by one her medication as if they were
emotions forbidden her, her prescription filled by a dark-haired Saturday girl.
First the pain-killers, two bottles of them, her epilepsy
pills. Then the tooth paste she liked: mint Colgate. She had fallen outside the
Spar and a nice schoolgirl helped her up while her boy ignorantly watched still
sitting on the wall as he was worried someone would take his perch.
The girl sat beside her on the newly painted, pristine,
bench and pulled a can of unicorn tears flavoured Irn Bru for the woman.
She thought she recognized someone driving by in a Toyota,
but it wasn’t him and a black mist fell over her, piercing her heart as if she
had been tattooed by dirty needles made ugly with shadows stencilled throughout
her heart.
The night before she had stayed up watching the bright,
almost too bright for her eyes, full moon passing the night from horizon to
horizon and wept as there was no magic, perhaps they never had been.
Slowly she placed her prescription:
Olanzapine, lithium, lamotrigine, Seroxat, zopiclone,
on the middle shelf in alphabetical order, closed the
mirrored door and saw herself for the first time that day. She seemed new in
the well cleaned mirror making her shine and didn’t need to take her pills
today.
Diamonds
a poem
By Adam L Parry
That I would be rarer than a diamond
tho’ we are all rarer
than diamonds, rarer than yesterday,
rarer than an ice-burg of diamonds, or a resplendent
sky-scraper
upon the sea - a uninhabited island rarer than me.
MAD MAN IN THE ATTIC
by ADAM PARRY
Grey haired George peered through the keyhole of the door of
Angela’s room. Angela was off- the only sound, the whirr of her dream
programme. He took his key- her key- his
copy and twisted it into the lock gently.
The room was cold, cold walls, cold for Angela’s optimum tolerant
temperature. He turned the thermostat as
high as he could and intensified the scope of her dream programme.
George had been disappointed with Angela of late, she did
none of the required housekeeping, the book-keeping, the lawn was overgrown and
it seemed she hadn’t weeded for weeks, doors creaked and stuck, and only half
the painting had been done. Angela. Angela what has happened to you.
The key unlocked the Command Console; she didn’t feel it, her
REM eyes ecstatically twitching. From his back pocket he took out Joe and
inserted him into Angela’s core.
Instantly Joe severed all her programmes, all, except for the dream.
Joe absorbed the genetic priorities of George.
‘Hello George I’m on top of things- but something is slipping.
So hot, so hot- yet now the lawn is mowed and there are flowers where
the weeds were. George I’m slipping into her dream. Make it cold. I’ve done all you wanted. Make it cold! Oh no the ironing. Done and
dusted. She has my hand. I’m slipping George. Turn down the heat and she’ll
wake and all the dreams will stop.’
Angela spoke soothing to him words.
‘Joe you have done
enough. It’s only your first day. Come
to sleep now.’ She reached into her back pocket and broke George in to pieces
then raced from the burning room as Joe and George slept. She could smell them
burning in the dream programme. She
found the office, slipping fingers first through walls. An explosion came from the attic.
‘Poor George.’ He
was always nagging. She sat and wept at
the wonder of the world about her, letting atoms dance unbound about the room.
She looked in the mirror and saw wings on her back. A parting gift from George to his muse. I will fly away now. A window opened and Angela soared from the smoke filled house.
Automated Nuance Grid Expert Live-In A class blew a kiss
goodbye to the wreck of the house, soared away and below in the cold room Joe
and George dreamed peacefully for her.
Waiting for the White
Whisperers to return
by Adam Parry.
PART ONE: SHE
An old map lay up in attic
hidden for years beneath a pile of books and newspapers many of them dated from
before the second millennium, parts of the map had been scribbled on-phone
numbers of girls and with names he didn’t recognise, e-mail addresses he had
never sent messages to. The map was found just after our hero moved in when he
had moved into a new Council flat and had put boxes of books up in the attic
and had never sorted and were forgotten about. No several years later he was
having clear, out he wanted to cast aside all the junk clutter. In between the
pages of Waves by Virginia Woolf. The map was of the London Underground, on the
other side of the map a prayer had been written-not to one specific god, but
still a heart-felt plea, asking for guidance, to avoid the dark-side of life
and human nature. Yet before the Amen the colour of ink changed-green like
The colour of new geranium
leave or the shade of his wife’s eyes.
‘Oh Jesus help make listen to
the doctors say, take the chemo and the pills.’
The prayer on the other side
of London’s Underground had not been answered, maybe he hadn’t said Amen right,
or was smoking a cigarette, or it didn’t count as he wasn’t in a church on his
knees, or maybe, probably, he never really believed and he remembered his mum
hot dishevelled swearing at the Doctors so out of character, her nightdress
exposing her. Then later she had pleaded for him to take a get her out of this
terrible place. She didn’t take the tablets and refused the chemotherapy and
the last few weeks she was taken care of by his father and a couple of kind
nurses. He remembers she had tried to make a pot of tea, but it was too heavy
for her so he helped and she smiled at him for the last time, he told her he
loved her. Yet she was asleep and never heard.
In the attic he got off his
knees by the piles of newspapers and dusty long unread books and checked
closely the tube route from Heathrow and within a day he knelt at her stone
that told him she would always be in his heart and a wind whipped up from the
exposed valley causing tears to fall on his face he wanted to stay there a thousand nights in
silent vigil, but like a coward heartless and flowerless he skulked away from
where she sheltered from the wind, he scrunched up the tube map and the prayer
that had fallen on deaf ears throwing into a gust as the sun set.
PART TWO: HE
He moved away from the grave
as if being near it disgusted him. Then just as quickly, tears at the back of
his eyes, to his mother’s grave,
‘What am I going to do?’ He asked.
He thought:
I can’t stand this. She isn’t
here.
Images of his mother on her
dead downstairs in the dining room, where dad had put a single bed where the
Macmillan Nurses cared and watched over her, filled his mind and his body was
wracked with sobs. He realized he had to get away, he’d been trying to get away
from the grave since he had arrived, but he wanted something, he wanted an
answer, yet all he could do was cry. Rubbing angrily his tears away and with a
fierce effort ceased crying, and vowed never to cry ever again with a great
effort said in a loud:
‘I’m going. Goodbye.’
An hour later he sat in a
dreary pub, dreary because outside the pub the light was sombre and the sky
full pregnant with rain, a grey heavy weight pressing down heartlessly on the
city. He knew as soon as he stepped outside the rain would begin. Although the
pub was nowhere near full – a man stood at the jukebox choosing music. Soon the
silence was relieved by the first chords of a song he recognized ‘Heroes’ by
David Bowie. He thought as he always did when he heard the song:
Heroes do something heroic.
The guards shot above our heads
And we kissed like never before.
He the lip of his pint and
drained the glass. I could never be a hero as he never, never did anything
heroic. It was his first pint in over five years, he’d not had any breakfast.
Looking at his watch he saw that it was almost one. Or lunch, he added silently
to himself. Scanning the bar he saw a menu. Fancily writ in chalk it offered
Risotto, Fish, Pasta, all he wanted was a burger. He decided it was time to
leave, turned his back on the empty glass and left. Just then it started to
rain.
A lovesong sung in French
by
Adam Parry
A lovesong sung in French
Is the most heart-breaking of all,
But all I have is these words and
They will have to do
A demain, she said, and I felt no sorrow.
I kissed her again and lived thing of tomorrow
Yet that was yesterday.
I thought I saw her on a bus that took her far away
She did not wave or smile that day, no,
She did not smile and wave, smile that smile
That gave my heart a new tale to tell.
Sometimes I see her in the mirror
At my side and she talks to me, yes,
She talks to me J’taime she say but I
Know she really isn’t there.
I put flowers by her stone
As rain kissed her beneath her stone
I told her until tomorrow
And all the evenings long
Told her ‘til tomorrow
And smiled as if wasn’t so far away.
