Thursday 7 March 2024

 

and no birds sing.

By

Adam Parry


Jacob’s wanderings led him upon the withered path where black bare trees, rotted. Fallen leaves like a sickness and the ground about the trunks infected, putrid as a nightmare. Here the green he had been surrounded by each summer’s day was tinged and out of focus like a trick of the mind. He sighed deeply feeling danger ahead, the start of the path had been so inviting, a gateway of interlocking oaks, sunlight caught the dew upon the many spider’s webs, wild flowers and long grass at the side of path almost growing as high as Jacob. Looking back towards the Moor where he had set off from, but it was not there and grey clouds encompassed the Earth, he was afraid but also stubborn and went still along the withered way.

Clumsily he is tripped over by roots in the slime of the path and plunged into it. It stank and he thought he might throw up and as he struggled to stand he realised he was plastered in it. He should go back and then he sighed this will pass and I’ll find a way to the sunlight. Now he tested the path for trickster roots or buried rocks and his way forwards was slow. Soon he heard the trickling of a water nearby and brightened and headed for it to be repulsed as soon as he saw it, dead birds were slowly being swept away on the surface a wild dead pig was rotting at the water’s edge its surface clouds of insect dark flocks and swift clouds all drenched in disease.

Yet still he stank and was disgusted by himself so he stripped and tentatively immersed himself in the dark dank looking water, flies feasted on his face and encircled his head. He lowered his head to escape the assault lowered deeper in dank water soon he submerged his head and for a moment he lingered unwilling to return to the surface. He began to clean himself afraid of the water, later naked he washed his clothes, he built a small fire and dried his garments, as the fire raged up orange spears of flame, strange noises came from the forest other angrier noises jarring joined in the protesting cacophony. It moaned: it seemed the forest was weeping. He realized it was his fire that had set them off so he threw mud on the flames extinguishing it and soon the sounds of trees diminished. Startling him a panic of wood-pigeons rose like the morning sun hidden above the gloom of the clouds.

A voice called his name and he felt a hand-gloved gentle touch on his shoulder. He turned and he recognized her face but he couldn’t remember her name or who she was, she smiled at him as if he were someone else. He tried to remember who she was and suddenly the woman shrunk away and turned into nothing. He trudged on his feet sucked into the mud then he heard a voice coming from the forest, he knew it was the voice of woman he had loved.

Retrace your steps; go back to where you were, go to where is the sun is happy in the sky, the dog walkers and all their dogs where trees grew tall forever green here sickness sleepwalks, as if it were barred from that world where song birds delighted in the blue, Go back the way.’ She offered her hand and turned him from the way to the sick lands and he started to walk as the woman led him along.

This way,’ she pointed to where he longs to lay in the long grass this way homeward. He looked back at the withered path yearning to survey it’s dark terror he wanted to push on believing in all the rot and decay he could see the something imbued with light and it would grow brighter in the dark.

He turned back and followed behind the woman he had loved, as he watched the swish of her tied length of hair behind her back rocking from side to side its golden stands mesmerising him. He remembered that he had left the house this morning to gather rocks to line his garden path, and now his eyes strayed and a moss green stone was half-immersed in the stinking mud. He stopped the woman’s hand was on his shoulder but he ignored it and bent down to wrestle the rock for his garden from the clinging mud, he began to get frustrated and again he was covering himself in mud and stinking, he began to get angry, and once again felt her hand on his shoulder and he rose with her touch and she faced him and put a light finger over his lips.

Shh. Come on.’ She grabbed his hand and a thrill rushed through him, a thrill of the memory of the hand always in his and always in his in all their lives they’d always had her hand in his and his hand in hers, the truth of her touch him made him run faster to the Moor as if he were fleeing the sick lands, yet ahead he could still not see the greensward of the moor and the woods beyond. He thought all those ideal rocks that’d look great in his garden and even as he ran he looked back at the dark places he come, then a desire to wrest his hand from her grasp and a paranoia began to eat him. What if she is taking me somewhere worse? Jacob began to struggle with her, but her grip was stronger than his and he did not get away, she would let him pause to look at interesting rocks, she sought his freedom and only their fingers combined could free him.

They all of a sudden came to the start of the withered path and moonlight spread over the moor and hand in hand they traversed the many ways of the moor and came to the subtle, strange shadows in the half-light of the woods. After the fearful dark of the withered way by contrast he felt as he were in a wonderful dream and he were a joyful ghost seeing diamonds in moonlit air. Jacob looked back at the two oaks at the start of path and cruelty crept into his heart. He didn’t belong any more under moonlight and starlight and he believed deeply that at the end of withered way he would find light at the end, light enough to heal the land. Here in eaves of the woods he would go back, but she looked deeply in Jacob’s eyes and read the plan in his head. She told him to sit beside her beneath a pine tree, unwillingly he sat there, here golden hair reminded him of the sun and he struggled to stay seated.

You will see the sun soon, stay with me until the dawn.’

She seemed to fall asleep and as she lay there he put his arms around her and in his dreams he knew her name and all the things they’d done together, yet when he awoke it was as he had never dreamt at all.

With the sun the dogwalkers walked as if in another dream started along their chosen paths. A dog golden retriever came up to her and licked under her chin, she startled awake and the dog flew off, she looked up at Jacob who extended his hand to pull her up she grasped the hand and soon she stood beside him and at the golden grass of morning moor, some of it high as houses they walked a swift way and soon could see away in the distance hills gathering about themselves on the lightening horizon. She spoke then, her final words and he held those words, the sound of her voice deep in his heart.

Shy away from withered ways, my love, there are always new routes under the midday sun, fresh worlds with fruit in the bushes and crows laughing. Wander far and wide with fresh sunlight at its end, but please as you wander the surprises of the earth, forget the unlight of the withered ways you will find new ways into the morning.’ She paused, then pointed to the intertwined oak trees. ‘That way no birds sing.’ She smiled and said again as if she were praying. ‘That way no birds sing.’ And with the last word she seemed to fade and only her tentative smile remained. And he never saw her again.

He heard the birdsong and listened deeply as he walked the familiar way to home. So many songs serenading the land he walked around the hedgerow down the muddy path to the quiet road where his home lay sleeping.

The next day he took a new way across the moor; in his heart he knew this path was true and each step delighted him. As he wandered he heard the canticles of the day and spoke to the dogwalkers with a fresh, new born smile and watched as the dogs roll in the moor, sunlit and smiling.

Wednesday 13 December 2023

The men in glass jars by Adam Parry

 

The men in  jam-jars by Adam Parry.

 

Jerry threw bread for the birds from his doorstep, he did every day, small squashed together pellets of white that take a while to find the seagulls sweeping in the sea of summer, crows protest and try to scare the wee birds away, but they go anyway beaks full to the safety of the garage roof, while the big birds search.

Reaching into the open kitchen door he took a second slice of bread, feeling some kind wonder  (what others’ might call happiness.)

I could stand here all day  watch the shadows fall away as the sun arches over the cottage slips to the garden side of the house burning on his face all afternoon as he watches the antics of the blackbirds, the family of starlings nesting beneath the overhang of his roof, a wood pigeon perched on the garage disdaining the free for all fighting as Jerry fed the birds then imperiously flew down the hill towards the river.

That was only a single slice of bread left.

When that was done and the garden became deserted he went inside. It was only ten o’clock in the morning still the post would be soon, he sat in the front room, had his last cigarette, and waited for the post as patiently as he had fed the birds. He’d stubbed out the fag ten minutes ago and there’d been only silence from the letterbox. After another five minutes he put on his long black coat and went out the front door taking time to dead head the rosebush at the side of the brown door.

Chemist. Fags. Bread. As he walked he couldn’t think of anything else he needed. He tried to remember how much milk was left, or the coffee but it just confused him, but he consoled himself instinct and memory would escort him round the shop and he usually got what he wanted. Halfway there beside the freshly painted letterbox slowly being hidden by the encroaching pine trees, a sun blanched stranger came up to him his face in Jerry’s and said bluntly:

‘You don’t need that coat in this weather.’

There was an anger in the man’s voice as if he were personally offended by Jerry’s coat, scowling Jerry walked on. Of course the fella was right by the time he got back he had the coat on his arm and he was sweating like a pig because of the pills he was prescribed. He dumped his bags on the kitchen floor put on the kettle hung up his coat, inside that brief meeting made him angry  I can wear whatever fucking coat I feel like wearing and he was pissed with himself that he’d let some surly interloper even dare to tell him what to do, in his mind he would wear the coat down the way the morn and he could tell the guy to go fuck himself, then a scream built up inside of him he ripped the cellophane from his fag packet, got the lighter to work after the sixth time made coffee and sat in his spot in the front room sunlight coming in from the half-closed curtains like temptation he felt the warmth on his face as he knocked back his five pills with his first coffee of the day.

After a while the mood faded away and the anger was if it had never been, the guy was just trying to be helpful not questioning his fashion taste and for the rest of the day he didn’t think of it again.

Maybe a month later and so soon high summer as Jerry in shirt sleeves and a bag of shopping in both hands made it to the pedestrian crossing without losing half his body weight in sweat, he was going over the road to the new cafĂ©, but then coming towards him on the far side of road was the same man from earlier who liked to tell strangers what to do, over his shoulder he carried a bag full of cans of lager. Oh, Jerry thought anxiously, he’s seen me. He turned away, wanting to be invisible, from the crossing and walked along his side of road away from the guy and his bag of lager then he was out of sight turning up towards the hill and home. At first he thought it funny that he’d snubbed the guy and his cans of hell, then he felt bad that he’d probably hurt the guys feeling that he, Joey, tee total Joey hadn’t wasted the day getting ridiculously pissed with this character he was growing to dislike, why the fuck should I fuck up my week just because he’s lonely. It was better to forget about it and he took his pills as he ever did and he forgets.

On the day Jerry always went to the library to take back a book, the same man was holding court at the row of computer. His voice loud enough to hear telling people how he once witnessed an autopsy and described it in gory detail a few of the others wanting to work on the computers got up from their chairs and fled Jerry annoyed he couldn’t concentrate reading the Evening Express started to follow them and he escaped lager man and the swirling morbidity and mental screaming that the guy had infected the hallowed library with. Jerry’s day was ruined and he’d already taken his pills. He was hungry and he didn’t want to go home where the harrowing events in the library would churn menacingly in his head, they’ll be letting footballer players in next, no, so instead he went into the Bank Bar he ordered sausage chips beans and two eggs and pint of coke, across from him under the on TV a fellow in working man’s attire scowled at him, Jerry idly wondered what disservice he had applied to this little person and then didn’t care his food had arrived.

He occasionally looked nervously back fearing the autopsy guy was following. He thought about  going back the pub to hide but he’d probably come in for his fourteen pints of lager, intimidating Jerry into a round and fool Jerry into talking to him. He had to take money out of the machine at the TSB to buy the vastly overpriced two-ton bag of cat food his cat liked. There was on person at the ATM and while he waited two others joined the queue. Ahead, suddenly panicked, of him was the autopsy guy checking his balance, he turned and saw Jerry and once he’d finished stood by Jerry.

Once again he pushed his face violently into Jerry’s personal space and said:

‘You don’t like me do you?’ Angry Jerry got out of the way of the other two in the queue, took a step towards the guy who moved two back.

‘I don’t even know you.’ Jerry exclaimed.

He managed to get free of the guy and started for home, his head nippy now he wasn’t able to get money because of the boy so now he was depriving my poor little cat with his utter ill-mannered way of behaving. The following week he didn’t take back his overdue book in case the boy was inside again.

Annoyed that his usual regime had be curtailed by George or Nathaniel or whomever the fuck he is. George suits him best, Jerry thought and stood on the  back doorstep feeding the birds  hot sun fell on his face he would sit in the garden soon, and write a chapter or two of a book and tidy up the weeds and the pea plant he cut off the green fans of the rhubarb plant , then cut the stalks he was well proud of the bundle of his favourite fruit. Again at the doorway Jerry fed the birds with renewed gusto and it seemed half the birds of the village flocked to Jerry that day.

Further along the row of cottages, out of sight of Jerry, George fed the birds with little pieces of white bread especially for the large congregation of sparrows, he thought he could do this all day watch the sun go down and the pink sunset surprise him and still on into the dark, all through the night, all the while trying to make friends with birds.

Wednesday 20 September 2023

 

Getting the messages in by Adam Parry

What do I need? Ray’s coat half on as he checked the fridge. Threw out the out-of-date microwave dinners feeling a transient guilt. What do I need? Milk. Cat food, Ray food, Fags, Meds. Coat on he took the front door keys out the inside lock finding time in his evident rush to check all the lights were off as he often forgot, then went out the back door. The road goes forever on and on out through the door you once belonged, he said under his breath as he walked the path, passed the diversity of his neighbours’ gardens the old mannie and wifie with his green shed were he potted plants to put on the front round the border of his front lawn, then the unkempt bus driver’s garden, then the new wifie with pristine silver, high backed garden furniture with a great view of the whirligigs the wind lifting drying washing spinning erratically and the garages like waiting pebble-dashed ogres over the road. He turned onto School Street a long sloping road that led down to the village, the expensive, village shops. Halfway down the hill by the post box he realized he hadn’t brought the letter he intended to post. Fuck me with frozen trout.

Stamping on ignoring the old folk with their Nazi comics. Come on, he told himself, stop getting angry singing to himself. Love. Love. Love anyone can see there was love, love, love, love all over me. He’d silenced his nippy head with the song at least until he got to the chemist.

Leslie was on the counter, she looked too young to be a grandmother, they mainly talked about the weather, she loved the sun, sometimes she put his pills all in separate small plastic pockets ceremoniously into a paper bag, a bag she insisted on using to put the meds he got each and every day, a bit of the sun he thought of her, but on this particular day she seemed to take a geological epoch before she handed over the bag. Come on, come on, he wanted to scream, but guiltily put a £2 coin in the RSPB tin and took a dark godwit stood outside the closed Library clumsily pinning to the bird to his coat. A frail man in mobility scooter floated by in the dark mirror of the library windows. He envisioned how this sudden startle would set him off.

-You should have bells on that-I’m sorry-too late you’ve already done it. Get a fucking bell I nearly died of a heart attack.

Then the argument blossomed out of all proportions and then there was an audience and centaur weeping stopped in his tracks, turned to face Ray.

-Well your still alive-leave him alone (an audience member told Ray). And as he walked quick down the pavement in rational mode he told himself that didn’t happen, but he was ashamed of the argument of his argument even though it was one that hadn’t happened. Ray told himself he would never do that really, how he would have regretted it if he’d taken his true colours out into the real world in seconds he pushed the train of thoughts behind halfway up the hill and thought he had pushed away that kernel of surprise and anger. He never used to think like this. In the Coop the hunched centaur was at the paper rack blocking the aisle of people waiting to get served. Thankfully by the time Ray got to the start of the queue centaur had bought his Nazi comics and was probably halfway home by now.

Suddenly out on the street after mentally cursing the two workmen who had walked right at him and Ray had to get out of their way, his body was hot and he was sweating. He got out of the way of the old lady with the rat sized dog with dreadlocks trying to get all his receipts and loyalty card into the wallet as he stood at the edge of the curb judging the traffic. He wondered if he were an old lady one of the vehicles would have stopped for me to cross, no, he thought, once they’d run her over they’d probably reverse over her and reach out and take her handbag. Unhappily he went toward to the crossing stabbed at the wait button and to his surprise a car stopped pulled up by Ray’s red light. He crossed swiftly but by the time he got to the pub over from the Coop the dread he felt going up that hill devoured him as if he could already feel the heaviness and breathless, the pain in his hips that by the time he got to the top would feel like he needed them replaced. As he turned the corner to the first steep rise having no other choice he stepped up, twice he stopped to catch his breath before he got to the shallower bending road, reluctantly he stepped to the grass as vehicles came at him or past him as Ray came to the sign Private Road use at own risk. It came to a stop at some bollards, but before that under the abundancy of two intermingled sycamore trees was his rock. It had probably been here since before he moved to the village, but of late he had taken possession and would gently rest, his heart beat hurting his chest that heaved as if he’d run for the bus. He counted, as he mostly did on his rock, to one hundred and he was ready to brave the road once more. The nice old woman with the young black Labrador said hello, perhaps a little surprised by the figure of Ray emerging from the stage curtain of leaves, up head the jumpy giant poodle was giving its owner trouble the poor thing was so skittish pulling the woman on towards Ray, at the sight of Ray the dog went a bit loopy jumped up and the bolted for Ray but only getting a leads length anywhere near him, then the poodle escaped back to the woman whose eyes looked as panicked as the dog.

I’ll just walk by and let you get on.’

She smiled. He sauntered along the only downwards part of the hill leaving the dog to sort itself out, feeling a little good about himself, but the hill bent round onto a narrower path, that was almost as steep as the first rise of Heart Attack Hill, that was when his hips started. And the anger rose thinking as usual he’d never get home his head screamed with expletives that sunk him into hypothetical situations. He took the bend up Towerview stoically, imagining being a Grand Prix motor racer and got to the three steps to the path that led behind the houses on Towerview all the way up to the green that led to the back door of his house, but by the time he got there he was Adolf on his soapbox, so hot and he thought his hip might snap if he’d walked any further. Leaving his bag in the kitchen he ripped of his coat and dragged off his t-shirt and he angrily shouted at a bit of plastic packaging stuck to his boot, he could not shake the fucking thing off eventually he picked it off with fingers, he grabbed a bottle of coke from his bag and sat at his table pulling his pills out of his trouser pocket, got a smoke ready and necked the pills all five down with his first sip of coke. Almost instantly as he lit up told to Adolf shut up and he began to forget the pain, in a few minutes his rational mind told him.

At least you got up the hill without killing anyone. Again.

Friday 21 July 2023

 Let the Grass Grow High

Not yet June

and the machines

are making their noise.

Cutters, grass blowers, lawnmowers.

(Can't hear the tinnitus in my head.)

Brring and ninning, yorring all the time.

just leave these bushes in piece...

leave the leaves alone

and 

always let the grass grow high.

Monday 10 July 2023

 Prea and the Pea by Adam Parry

A beautiful and well-educated young woman is Prea; her family owned mines and slaves. Their servants were many and their larders well-stocked. Prea could be terribly selfish and hardly appreciated the luxury in which she lived.

One day after a rather epic tantrum she left her home, mother, father, the twins and all they had sacrificed for her and given her. She turned away from it all.  In days her clothes were ragged, she was hungry, so hungry and her shoes were worn down with all the aimless walking she had done.  Yet even though each footstep was a struggle leading her away from home she carried on.

Afraid now, not knowing what to do, but still with stubborn determination never return to those people and that house.  She felt her will was weak and she knew deep down her parents would welcome her back but days followed days and she did not return. Prea lived in the wild and begged on the streets. Years followed years and she had gotten used to the hard life - homeless, marked with loneliness. So she did not return, and as the speeding years passed quicker, she had all but forgotten her childhood and the people in it, and at times she wondered if they had forgotten her too.

But one day, Prea, older, haggard and malnourished in the bitter cold came to a fancy folks houses and knocked on the door she had chosen to scrounge from.

Her Father opened the door. She did not recognise him and he showed no sign that he recognised Prea. But his heart went out to the woman who shivered at his door. He bade her enter and gave her bread more that she had eaten in a fortnight and the fine gentleman gave her a room to sleep in with a very soft and comfortable looking bed. At the sight of a real bed tiredness overcame Prea and she lay down thinking she’d be in the arms of Morpheus in no time.  Yet she was both surprised and disgruntled that for a long, awful night she lay wide awake fidgeting from one side of the expansive bed to the other.

In the morning the gentleman asked how she slept.

Still tired she sullenly told him that she hadn’t slept a wink. Again the man fed her and, in the evening, offered the bedroom again to stay in if she wanted to and when she remembered her lonely desperate life with no nice people she accepted. She noticed a new mattress on top of the old...

Yet frustratingly each night and morning were the same and each morning the usual question, ‘Did you sleep?’

Grunt, stamp to the toilet, slam door and when she got back to her room yet another mattress was on her bed.  For more than a year and a day, or maybe two or three, the bed was piled precariously with mattresses beneath her.

Finally there was one night when the mattresses were piled so high Prea’s nose almost touched the ceiling and yet again despite all the old man’s efforts she did not sleep, but, her nose on the ceiling sparked a Kaleidoscope of memories. (She had been like this, high up on her tower of plush and luxurious mattress and her heap of flattened pillows, many nights long ago, somewhere else, not in the prison of the world, but somewhere excellent where cobwebs tickled her nose and she had thought how silly life was.)

In the morning she climbed down and down and the old man greeted her in the hallway. Once again:

‘Did you sleep?’

But when she saw him this day she saw him as the little girl being tickled by a cobweb and she ran to him crying Father! And she held onto him for what seemed 'til tomorrow or the next day. When she released her clasp she stood back.

‘Where is Mother?’

He could not look at her.

‘She is gone. Dead a long time now,’ but he lifted his head and was surprised to see his daughter's pretty face beneath all the hard years tattooed on her old body.

‘And Matti? And Abigail?’

He sighed then shrugged. ‘They have big families of their own…’ then he looked her full square in the eyes ‘…why did you leave us?’

She had no answer.

Outside the warm, bed filled house, beyond it’s light, out where the wind blows, outside where the lost and the broken and the lame of mind slept and dreamt and dreamt, the snow fell.


Tuesday 20 June 2023

The Light and the Dark

 Ron dreaming startles awake, finds himself in utter darkness. A voice had reached through the levels down to the deep riches of his dreams and shocks him into blindness.  He has no idea where he is; is he part of the black that seemed to reach forever? He wants to return to the palaces of his squandered dreams.

Has he really lost his sight? Blind? His fear grows the longer he lies prone on the bunk frozen in time and by fear. Soon Ron begin to imagine his own personal monsters glutting on his terror, yes, yes they wait laughing at my cowardliness. Was I dead? Or have I been buried alive? He could lie here and just accept an eternity of moon dark, star death, the air dense and massive as a black hole.

Yet, buckling the fear away Ron almost jumps out the bed going to battle his monsters. Somehow he found the door fingers anxious at the lock got it open as surprising as the darkness the bright light in the corridor outside almost took his breath away. He said aloud:

‘I thought I was in the grave.’ There is a stunted noise of cruel laughter. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’ Laughing Man makes a half-hearted threatening noise. But Ron was braver now he has seen the illumination and his panic has subsided. It is a relief he had not been buried alive.

Behind him the room is starting to light up, he turns nearly bumping into Laughing Man who doesn’t look at all happy and is the size of a well-built shed brushing passed him into the toilet. The gay guy he’d talked about Ernest Hemingway in the restaurant is still in the lying in the bottom bunk, while the guy above him looks at him in disbelief. Ron wanted to get out of here quickly he stuffed his books and pad in his rucksack and was out into the precious light of the corridor. Now there were people, a few, and he follows behind them, as he walked he tries to figure out the look Top Bunk guy had made. Ok Ron hadn’t slept much, read a free copy of the magazine Nexus in the passenger lounge, smoked out on the viewing deck, got bored with the magazine and thought about trying to sleep. Of course he tried his best to be quiet, but sleep would not take him, so out again he went doing his best to be quiet, but once he’d smoked another cigarette he didn’t know do what to do. He lay on an uncomfortable couch as about the passenger deck others had already had the same idea. So he went back to the room and makes no attempt to be quiet. No wonder they’d given him such foul looks, idly he imagined he was lucky that they let him live.

Though now he was free of them and once more he went to the viewing deck watches while he smokes Scotland passing on his right fire lit by dawn’s sun over the calm waters. The sky was clear from horizon to the horizon. The night before one of the crew had told him:

‘Good job you didn’t travel last week, this is the calmest all year.’

His cigarette has long gone out, but he is lost in the morning light the changing coastland, yet relaxing on the  white guard rail in his boots and dirty coat he felt barely aware he was moving at all. Others came out to smoke as the hours before arrival time sped by the like the beaches and cliffs, little towns hugging the coast and the nearer to Aberdeen the ferry came the coastland seem to pass more swiftly and he could see lines of passengers getting their breakfast. As if he has lost time like it were a forgotten song he should know, but didn’t, suddenly he saw the sands of Footdee where he had played with his dog and his daughter. At last, he sighed as if he were breathing out a lung full of smoke and anxiety, I’m home and that long day of sunlight lay ahead of him.

Thursday 4 May 2023

 


A view from the No. 19 by Adam Parry


The cloud mountains reaching high over the horizon

-not unlike a mirage-

on the hills over the river.

A battlement of formidable pine trees

high up with no wars to fight today.

The river hidden by the folds of the field of horses, hidden by

trees, houses,

but I knew exactly when to look. This gap between houses, what I would see...

that bend in the river where the fisherman reigns in silence and the heron spectates,

passing so briefly by, but moved

as we move on inevitably to the lonely Terminus.