The morrow’s morn
So strange that dream
lucid, leering, comes again.
She looks weightless as a whisper.
So strange, so many dreams, all special effects,
unaware as the day moves in the kaleidoscope
in her mirrored eyes. Secure
in her own colours, needs no tints or photoshops
to make her more beautiful.
On the street where you live
I stand musing all day.
Knowing you know I am the same
Or am I different now.
On the street where you live
I sat basking in the sun a lifelong long,
then took a photograph of a rose
PATHWAY TO THE BELOVED
by ADAM PARRY
I was small
once, always hunched over on my tricycle racing after my friends on their
bicycles half way down the street, I felt happy though racing and pedalling
after them: wind whistling passed my ears and the rattling rush of the wheels. They stopped for me to catch up, I said see
you later and went to the guy Chris’ house who had a railway line outside his garden and shot his air
rifle at the passing trains. He was fat
and smelt, but he was always doing things I would never consider doing. James my other friend got his foot stuck to
the roundabout, the same one I handcuffed myself to, in the schoolyard in a
protest against the school dinners.
James had to get a pig skin graft.
I laughed and threw an egg at him.
Mark hit me a lot and he was a lot cleverer than me and when my class
went out to view a solar eclipse, he was doing a mathematics exam and frowned
at me. He tried to beat me up again, but
for once I got the better of him, punched him, my fingers pulling his hair,
just as I was about bang his head senseless, all the bigger kids pulled me off.
Typical. The only time I got the better of him and they pulled me off. Next time I saw him I threw a dart in his
palm. I don’t know whether this was
before I got run over or not. My dad
creosoted a lot and told me never to go off the street. He was cement mixer driver and snored, even
before I got run over.
I left a school grey jumper in a park garden halfway home and
my sister, and I, unaware I’d lost the jumper traipsed behind as I raced to the
colourful library just at the side of a long grey road wet with rain. We got a bag each of library books. Then some bigger kids, snorting with snarls,
wrestled them off us, and we flew home.
‘Where’s your jumper?’ Mother asked me.
‘I lost it.’
‘Well go an unlose it’
So I went and searched and wandered back to the little park,
there was no sign. I didn’t really want
to go home, predicting ‘World War Three’ as Dad referred to these arguments
where I am always causing ructions. So,
in trepidation, I went back to the field by the library, trying to find our
library books. I imagined that the big
kids hadn’t actually wanted to read them.
Sure enough, I walked in a big green hilled area and found piece by
piece the ripped and scattered books strewn about. I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Loaded with bundles of pages and covers I sheepishly
went into the Library. I assured the
lady librarian that this was not my doing.
I was greeted crossly.
‘I was attacked and they took the books and I came back and
they were all like this. I tried to get
every page.’ Time for tears, I thought,
but her look mellowed. ‘I will pay for them if you want even though it wasn’t
my fault.’ The librarian took the books,
most of the torn pages, and said it would be alright.
Even so I was pretty miserable on the way home. I still hadn’t found my school jumper. I was in for it. I bought some refresher chews and meandered
up our street. Mother was asleep, Dad
gardening. I retreated to the safety of
my own books and bunk bed until the call for teatime and the twenty questions.
I fell asleep
and I was bigger on my way home from The Manor School, cycling home,
freewheeling on my way to the corner to our street. Then a sight caused me to slam on the brakes
and I almost went over the handle bars.
There, there was an opening to a cave; I pulled the bike to the side of
the road. I was alone as I watched and
watched as little men with casks of treasure hover down from a tree and one by
one went into the cave. I knew that I
shouldn’t go and follow as I would get lost in the darkness and twists of the
cave, yet, still I sat on the bike. Before
I woke up I had laid it by a fence and began to scramble over toward the
wonderful cave.
‘Sam. Your Dad wants to see you.’ Mother called
from the sitting in front of the telly room.
I wasn’t sure whether I should weep first and tell the sorry tale of the
Library books, soften him up a bit before the blow: no, I had not found my
Jumper. Maybe a bit of weeping after
that would do the trick.
He was
alone, shaving, giving me a grimacing look, but he always looked grimacing when
he shaved. I sat in my chair, quavering, holding the
blubbering in until he’d finished shaving and I could better judge his mood.
Slowly and precisely
after he had finished shaving, he took a little black brush and cleaned the
inside of the shaver, and once finished, put down it out of sight by the side
of his chair.
‘So what can
I do for you? Your Mum said....’
‘Sorry’
‘Why are
sorry?’ he smiled sarcastically. ‘I
mean, you were away a long time so you must have found the jumper.’
‘No.’
‘O so now you
have to go out again and look for it until you’ve found it and it is getting
dark. You better go soon or there won’t
be light to see.’
‘But you
said I wasn’t to go off the street.’
‘Seeing as the
brand new jumper that you got two weeks ago cost me more money than you can count I don’t
really care if you are wandering about all night, before school, after school
and every day until you have found it.’
He got out
of the chair. I smelt tea being made as
he went through to the kitchen and closed it behind him. I put a Refresher chew in my mouth and let
myself out, banging the door loudly behind me.
I went and
played some football with two or three school friends. I was in goal and saved a few for a change.
When it got dark they trailed off and I sat on the wall by the Scout Hut
wondering how serious Dad had been. I
let myself into the kitchen door. No-one
was about. I ate some Stovies out the
pan on the cooker and wandering about the kitchen on my tip toes I saw on the calendar
a picture of The Horseshoe Path.
Tomorrow’s date had written beside it.
‘SAM, Dr
Gwyn 10 o’clock.’
I wasn’t ill
I thought. Yet a day off school would make up for the mess I had made of
today. I crept to my bed. In the morning the missing Jumper wasn’t
mentioned. Mother was all light and
smiles, told me to put on the good clothes she’d hung out for me and took to me
an unfamiliar medical centre and there, by a very scary lady, I was
semi-castrated. I got three days off
school, unfortunately. I only lost a jumper,
in agony I thought, they didn’t have to do that to me.
One day I
had no money for the bus to school and met Phillipa Jones on the way up the
road. She was the age of twelve, not my
first love, I’d been dating since I was three coming on four, my first love’s
mother became a Mormon and wouldn’t let us in when we came to play. Eventually I moved on. Phillipa was dark
haired and black of eye, with a pale complexion, she was wearing a golden
jacket and skirt and low heeled shoes. We walked arm in arm to school, passed
the tree where to my surprise a tattered grey jumper was caught in the
branches. I knew it was mine, but I was
too content chattering with Phillipa to go and retrieve it. Anyway Mum had bought me a new one to make up
for the scrotal operation.
Before we
went into the school gates, Phillipa held my arm and told me that her Dad had
got a job in Belgium.
‘Oh that’s
nice. ‘ I tried to kiss her so I could
get to my class on time as it was drama and the only class worth going to, but
she held onto my arm as she took her cheek away from my approaching lips.
‘We’re all
going with him. In two weeks.’
‘Oh and when
are you coming back?’
‘Never.’
I ran away
from her, blindly, catching my new jumper on the school gates, hearing her
shout ‘Sam, Sam.’ I’d ripped another jumper, I was dead. See what you made me
do, I almost turned my head and shouted at her.
I never wanted to see her face again. ‘I’ll write,’ she shouted as I ran
further away, so I could not hear her voice.
I stopped then and turned back.
‘Oh please
write Phillipa and I will write to you every day.’ Then I walked as calm as
ninepence to my Drama class.
Mrs
Fitzgerald glowered at me, and I found a corner on my own in the studio.
‘As I was
saying. This summer we are going to be doing a play for the whole School. And the play has lots of parts and lots of
sets and props to be made and there will be a terrible lot of costumes to be
made. So it’s all hands to the deck’
One of the
third years asked what the play was. I
sighed at his ignorance. If he hadn’t figured it out yet, Mrs. Fitzgerald had
been dropping hints for weeks; in the exercises and improvisations we had been
doing, being Dwarves and Dragons and sending us out on treasure hunts, building
caves too out of glue and old newspapers. Occasionally she’d call someone
precious out of the blue, and I could not stifle my laughs.
When she
finally handed out the scripts, the studio erupted in glee and anger.
‘Oh no. At least it’s not a musical version.’
Philistines. Or:
‘I will be
the lead, no maybe the wizard,’
‘I want to be the Dragon. Does the Dragon have a song?’
I could
perhaps see them as villagers without much dialogue, if any. As for the girls they’d all be in the Wardrobe
and Set building departments for as far as I could remember there weren’t any
females in the Play.
The other
Sam, cheese breath, walked over to me, I turned my nostrils away from him just
in case he breathed on me. He gave me a copy of the script.
‘Who are you
going to audition for?’ He wafted
gorgonzola towards me, it seemed to completely encompass my head and my pores
sucked in the stench, until I almost tipped over and projectile vomited like an
out of control water fountain.
I had to get
out of there.
I snuck out
in the mayhem and went to the classroom where I knew Phillipa Jones would
be. The classroom was empty. I wandered
through the empty playground, picked up a few stray chipped marbles and a
silver button. I decided to climb a
tree. I walked over the white lines of the football pitch, but by the time I
reached the copse of trees I felt tired and it was not even noon. I looked sneeringly back at the school. I could hear them all now gossiping about who
would play the part of Bilbo.
God and I
had worked it out. I would be
Bilbo. I sat on a fallen log for a
bit. I saw a couple of 2nd
years kissing behind a bush. Over at the
cricket pitch some of the School team were practicing. I decided that I should go back to the drama
studio and collect a script. I wearily
got up, as I was crossing the football pitch. Something hit me in the face and
I blacked out. I was not sure if that was before I was run over the first time
or the second time.
I was in a tree
looking down, near were the road steeply curved beneath the railway bridge then
swept up Upton Drive. A hand held mine and I looked around a small black faced
creature covered in a red robe and silk tapered hat sat beside me on the
branch. He wanted to show me the cave
beneath the railway line. I told him a
panic that I had to see Phillipa Jones away at the Station. I will never see her again. The creature smiled, let go of my hand and I
climbed down the tree swiftly and he helped
me onto my bike. I scissored between the
white markings of the centre of the road. Peddled as fast as I could to the Station, but
Phillipa Jones’ train had left. I wept
myself into unconsciousness. Then woke
in my bedroom.
I had been
hit by a cricket ball. My head hurt, but apparently I was getting a week off
school. I asked my sister to get me a copy of the script and to find out when
the audition was. I never said anything
about Phillipa Jones; in fact it was if I had already forgotten her. A letter came. It was an invitation for her
going away party. I frowned at it. As far as I was concerned she had already
gone. I lay back on my four pillows and read
the script from start to finish then started to learn Bilbo’s lines. Also
Gollum’s just in case, and the week lasted a long, long time.
I used to peddle
and peddle after my friends the rushing through my hair, but they went too fast
and I couldn’t catch up with them.
I remember now.
I did not go to the station; I went to Belgium.
The red masked man zipped me to her as if it knew my heart. I got on the
station up the line. I saw a red light over me as I passed beneath the railway
bridge. Always a red light.
I am now unstrapped the cotton buds and wires
taken away. I remember the little man in red and black took me to her in time
and I flew through the train window and sat beside her and she kissed me and I hugged
her as if we were old friends parted for a lifetime. Somewhere along the
corridor to the TV room I forgot about the red masked being slowly it all
dissipated like dreams on waking up as we waiting in line for morning
medication.
I look out
at the Garden of Roses, red, and I do not remember anything after that.
