two poems by Adam Parry

 

A future road by Adam Parry

 

Tall straight trees

beckons us, before us

goes our laughter

mingling with the songbirds' song.

Grass waist high

blown with our breathes.

Wild cats watch from high rocks

as we dance and play

children again

like no children have ever been.

Together your hand in mine

We go.

A lifetime’s bus journey

by Adam Parry

 

1.   A memory of a long-ago bus journey, Marillion

is in. I eat a money spider in the dark

at the back of the fast-flowing bus.

I’m content as the music starts and again

as the music repeats, I am content.

2.     Time, ticks, tricks of the mind,

Jonathon Richmond is in, I eat

the rain as I wait for the bus the music in head

sings louder than the rain.

3.    Cascades of trees speed me from my home, Ten

Thousand Maniacs is in, later a leaf flies in my window

And settles in my lap and then more and I make

myself stew with them.

4.   Motorway hitch hikes about me, no music today

I eat nothing

especially cheese.

 5.   All the rivers of the world fly by

as my bus flowed in the rain, raindrops on my tongue I need

as I left my ginger in the bag in the hold.

The Cure is in my dry ears, running for so long.

6    Tail-lights at the Terminus beckons me

and I run before it goes hot in dawn’s cold

a song plays new music a chorus of birds, greenness

everywhere as I get on.                

The story of Jacs Gaugan

I am searching for story

I left somewhere

under a granite paper-weight.

I wonder where when I forget to dance, 

to close my eyes?

Dreaming unemployed Jacobites spread technicolour,

as if I could forget you

as if I could leave you in the past

when how many showers I take I could not wash you a way

your imprint on me. How could I forget you my Jacs?

As a original as a unfinished story, you left your fingerprint on me

it seeks form, but floats off like a feather

lands later, too late for a lover

and for dancing under the moon.

Mortal woods by Adam Parry

 

Mortal woods

 

The rain droops the day.

Resigned hunch trees stand thinking:

with all the world's wars and many, many pains

I stand stoically in the rains.

And if the wars and many pains subside

I will still stand tall in rain and in the sun,

beneath star shine where birds sleep

and alone under the moon.

Dorothy by Adam Parry

She plays upon the dark in me

and walks so alone.

She doesn't tell me what she dreams 

of these I'll never know.

She runs her fingers through my hair

as if I were not there.

She'll love me for an hour or two

and then off she'll go.

She communicates by mobile phone

but never speaks for long.

She called me honey the other

and it almost sounded wrong.

D might do anything I ask her to

but that night she was my light.

 

Rings by Adam Parry.

 

     Last winter a tree in the garden had been blown down by a particularly vicious storm and since then a ring of mushrooms had grown about where the trunk had been. They were going out for the day Beth, his sister, knowing Ray’s taste for psilocybin, with a surprising flurry of anger kicked and stamped the mushrooms, killing them dead.

     ‘Beth! What have you done?’ He cried out:

     ‘They’re not Magic Mushies,’ He added trying to tell her calmly, but her face was flushed and there was danger in her eyes, ‘well they are magic but ancient magic. You shouldn’t break a mushroom ring the fairies get angry.’

     She laughed at this and walked on ahead of him to the car.

     ‘They’re old, old magic.’ He said lamely, but she wasn’t listening. Ray started to weep when he sat beside her in the passenger-seat, such a dread had overtaken him. He knew deep and instinctively what would happen to her and couldn’t stop crying. He was inconsolable, not that she tried to console him. She gripped the steering so strongly her knuckles were red and drove off forcibly, and it seemed she were behind the car pushing it down the hill.

     Still harsh images filled and flailed his brain, full of the horrors he foresaw would happen to her but I could not stop weeping, and certainly inconsolable although she tried.

     ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ she said, already missing her day in the sun. She told him, as his whole body was racked with sobs she heard Ray say breathlessly:

    ‘You shouldn’t, you’ve woken them, You shouldn’t ….’ He ranted incoherently. She unlocked the door for him and helped him to his spot where he proceeded to pull at his grey hair. And incoherently he ranted. ‘The world is six thousand years old. Ain’t it Jesus?’ he said sarcastically, ‘no, but old and ancient more than you could ever imagine ,’ Beth said to herself I don’t believe in magic and in his pixies and fairy rings.

     Still he weeps waiting the end of the world, Beth brings him a cup of tea and tries to get him on the sofa so he could relax. She brought a Wagon Wheel and he just looks at them as she tries to give them to him. She leaves them on the table by the sofa and kneels on it, his face made washed and bright faced by his tears. He smiled when he saw her.

‘What’s the matter?’

 ‘I’m worried about you,’ She laughed,

 ‘I’m fine, silly, I’m worried about you.’

  He grabbed her arm his long, dirty nails cut into her soft freckled flesh,

‘You must take care you have to beware’

And over and over he said the same words his voice darkening with each word as his nails dug deeper in her skin. ‘Ow’ she said and released herself from his grip.

    Slowly, very slowly his maniacal sobbing subsided, and Beth began to think again, but now the house was so silent and it unnerved her. She could get the Dr or at least a nurse and some kind of sedative to calm him down. Or maybe the hospital.

    Ray knew already a ghist had come into the room, he could see it through his third eye. The ghist lingered around Beth completely unaware of it, it’s fingers catching in her hair touching the bare flesh on her arm. And there! There was another, laughing at the first as it’s unsubstantial finger’s swept over his sister like a caress, the new one came closer invisibly plucking at her skin like the ghist was trying to pinch the woman awake. Ray had to close his third eye so he couldn’t watch or hear the scornful laughter of the ghist.

    He stood, surprising her.

    ‘We have to go,’ he cried out and grabbed her arm again, pulling her to the front door and pushing her outside. ‘Go to the car.’ He watched her half-heartedly walk to the car, linger and look back at him. When he saw she had put her seatbelt he grabbed his coat followed after her, almost running to the passenger side door and shakily attaching his seatbelt. ‘Let’s go.’

   ‘Where to?’

   ‘To Mum’s she’ll know what to do.’

   ‘She’ll tell you to get ECT,’ she laughed bluntly but he didn’t like the way she spoke so sarcastically and why was she laughing?

    He pretended to ignore her, breathlessly, the words were too difficult to speak he told her to go to the Health Centre, ‘they’ll know what to do.’ He looked out of the back of the car as they began to drive off down the hill, he was sure he saw a ghist running behind them, or was it just a windswept shadow on the road. ‘Quickly,’ he demanded. Then she hears him laugh, he had never seen a ghist running, it looked ridiculous, but then there was a second ghist running beside it both almost catching up with the car. ‘Faster.’

    Beth didn’t indicate as she turned down the long shallow road to the Health Centre and nearly hit someone, she yelped but carried on down the road while that someone stood shaking, and gave her the finger. Three  ghist engulfed this someone, Ray saw, and they doubled over vomiting, then the disinterested ghist ran on again after Beth’s car, a third from out of the shadows of a garden joined the other two running behind the car almost reaching it more emerging from the corners of his eyes swung from tree to tree that lined the road, Ray lost count of how many there were. All their eyes fixed upon his sister, greedily.

     He could hear them screech with pleasure as the nearest jumped onto the car urging the others on. He told her to go faster and laughed sharply when the ghist fell off.

     ‘I’m going to kill someone.’ Beth said, slowing down.

     Out of his third eye the ghist, at three of four jumped onto the back of the car and carefully tried to make their way forward to Beth’s window.

     ‘They’re here,’ he called out. ‘Beth you have to shake them off.’

     ‘Who? Who? Have you taken your meds today.’

     She parked untidily in front of the Health Centre, quickly he got out of the car closing his third eye alarmed by the vision of the ghist swarming over her as she got out and slammed the door of the car,  he led her through the sliding doors and into the sanctuary of the Reception. Behind him as he muttered prayers he saw the ghist angrily scraping and scratching at the closed sliding doors.

      She turned to face Ray:

      ‘What are we doing here?’

      ‘I need to see my doctor, persuade her to give you a sedative.’

      She laughed that laugh again, making him feel stupid, but she could not see the ghists.

      ‘Me, you more like.’

      He turned to the Receptionist and asked if he could see Dr Helen.

      ‘She’s with another patient,’ the young despondent looking woman said. She looked up from her computer. ‘You might be able to see her in forty minutes.’

       ‘Forty?’ He repeated anxiously. ‘OK then.’ But, it wasn’t OK, wasn’t fine, the thought of so long a wait made his fear grip him more tightly, he turned to Beth behind him, but she was gone, his frame of vision was filled exclusively by the ghists at the sliding door grinning at him with expectant triumph. Ray felt he had been punched in the face and looked about desperate for the sight of his sister, this way and that his sight lurched from the door, to the unconcerned Receptionist and the faces of the people dumbly waiting to be called in by a Doctor, then suddenly he saw her staring at a picture of Dunnottar Castle part of an exhibition by Stonehaven Artists. He walked over to her, and said in a pretence at cheerfulness:

         ‘Only forty minutes.’

         ‘Only?’ She looked at him angrily. He shrugged and took a seat, took the book he always carried with him: The Nonviolent Revolution by Nathaniel Altman, his distracted mind urging Beth to sit beside him, but defiantly she stared at another watercolour painting then moved on to a charcoal sketch that seemed to twist off the canvas, he looked down and tried to concentrate on the words in the book, but he’d get to full stop of one sentence then go back to its start, then again until the words began to lift off the page like flies off rotten meat and form in the waiting room air into spider’s webs that clung to the corners of the room, out from webs cautious spiders emerged. The spiders eyed Beth standing there and slowly they fell from the webs on threads all about her. His face fell back to book but the pages were empty and about him the room grew darker and the webs multiplied and the bravest spiders fell upon Beth’s back and began inching towards her pale neck her jugular vein pulsing, it seemed she could feel his eyes staring at her and she’d turn her head, causing the spiders to retreat, and look at him with complete despite.

 Suddenly the room became as dark as the eyes of a psychopath and he saw as one then the other ghists entered the waiting room. He wanted to be sick. They encircled his sister their fists raised they were carrying daggers.

 Unexpectedly, before time, surprising him Dr Helen, like a flash of lightening obliterating the dismal ghists sent the spiders scurrying back onto the pages of the book and burnt away the webs, appeared in the waiting room smiling as if there was no death. Beth sighed as Ray put a bookmark slowly and carefully between the pages of Altman’s book, rose from his seat and slow as a sleepwalker followed them into the doctor’s office with its brightness and health engulfing him and leaving him without the memories of what was outside the door.

Ray as he looks in the Doctor’s kind eyes, he knew she was aware of his agitated distress  and felt a great calm envelope him like a gentle storm overcoming him. Beth sat at the desk commandeering the whole of the office, with its bright posters of Barcelona and other cities which Dr Helen must have visited and by the desk there was a tank full of tiny fish. Ray watched the maybe a hundred fish over Beth shoulders. He sat at the seat beside Beth but would rather sit anywhere else, not beside her, his sister, rather in the lap of Dr Helen but he had no choice. A rank smell came into to her office after as the attack upon them in the waiting area the spiders and the ghists had left their  mark upon Beth, their greasy fingerprints, the webs matting her hair, it seemed she wore a cloak of black  and he was afraid to look at her, already the destruction of the fairy ring was causing changes in Beth, and feared what would come next and transform her into death. The Doctor smiled a gesture that made it seem her arms encompassed him.

‘What can I do  for you?’

Ray started to answer but Beth butted-in and didn’t allow him to interrupt. She said:

‘I don’t think Ray is very well he’s been bursting into tears as if there’s a wolf howling within him and he’s saying the strangest things. It is quite upsetting he has had trouble before but not like this. I think he has stopped getting his medication. Is there something you can do?’

‘And you? Ray what has happened to feel so sad? Last time I saw you, you seemed fine. Do you feel ill? Dr Helen said.

‘No knowing him he just wants to be the centre of attention when he was in.’ Beth answered tartly.

‘No. No. It’s not me, Beth is in trouble she broke something inside of her. Help her…’

‘ He’s been like this all day. He’s not making sense.’

With compassion in Dr Helen turned her gray-eyes on Ray – as he stumbled over his words in an effort to explain

‘I know when she’s going to die. And the life she has left will be filled with anguish and despair and you must help her now so she does not make it worse. I know now when she going to die and I cannot help her alone, will you help?’

‘I don’t need help.’ Beth said

‘She’s dying doctor, she doesn’t believe me, but she needs protection. Please.’

Beth almost screamed ‘Ray calm down.

‘He isn’t psychic, psychotic perhaps, how can he know when I’m going to die, he’s crazy’

‘No. No’

Ray began to cry again envisioning the terrible life Beth will have. The thoughts triggered new visions from his third eye. He heard a thudding on the doctor’s door loud and resonant and clanging deep inside him. Then from behind the desk where Dr Helen sat, a ghist appeared, then another, spiders he hadn’t noticed until then began to drape Beth with their dark constricting web. The banging on the door stopped and for a moment or a minute Ray wasn’t sure how long there was a terrible silence in the room, he could see his companions were speaking together but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, then from behind his chair came terrible growling like a dog about to attack  as the door began to open. He turned and shuddered overwhelmed with fear. A creature neither ghist or spider came into the office, like a leper mishappen, it’s body parts twisted and missing. Coated with black tar that drip-dripped on the office floor smoke lifted into the confined room growing denser and as dark as a star abandoned dark as the creature advanced into the chilled and gelid air that choked the office. The tar had burned holes in the carpeting, Ray shaking with fear tried to hide from it, to get swallowed by the fabric of the chair, but the creature brushed past him and as if Ray were not there then the thing walked into the desk through it advancing on Helen, she did not react, she could not see or feel as the creature entered into her body then vanished as if he were wearing the doctor like a second skin.

Dr Helen decided Ray was too distraught and overwhelmed with paranoia, she turned to Beth. ‘I can you give him some sedatives, if you think you need them?’

‘No doctor,’ he cried out. ‘She can’t fight it. She has to rely on me to keep her safe.’

‘Yes doctor.’ Beth ignored him. ‘Give him the sedatives, he is scaring me. Won’t they stop all the craziness of today? He needs your help. Please.’

Possessed by the creature she wrote out a prescription for Ray as the leprous being within giggled at the back of his mind, she looked at Sara. ‘The chemist will be open, get this filled and make sure he takes them. Then make an appointment for next week and we’ll see how his getting on.’

Beth almost had to prise him from his chair his hands gripped the armrests.  Why won’t she listen, he thought. Resigned, he felt week and invisible he let Beth drag him from his chair and she pushes him from the doctor’s office. She raced for the car, no ghists attacked her, Ray laughed thinking of them running away terrified by the powers’ in the Health Centre or       perhaps the insubstantial beings flown from the earth by an esoteric wind away, up the empty street, quieter than roads during Lockdown, he scanned for spiders the webs about Beth but seemed free of them. He took his seat, The engine running louder than his thoughts, he blurted out scared of Beth’s answer:

‘Could we go to the river!’

‘Good idea.’ In no time they got to the end of the street, and waited to turn onto the main road beyond the bar’s car park but at the junction a seemingly endless amount of cars with no space to cross Beth launched into a particular vicious road rage incidence that grated-on Ray’s nerves and he told just to be patience. But she was about to start  a second bout of road rage as she had waited and wasted her time in the hot, green day they sat there stuck for what seemed half an hour, yet finally a kindly god-blessed driver left room for them to cross, and swiftly she went through the gap, with a wave of thanks, to the far side of the main road. They made their way to the river down the side streets of the valley. She parked down in the car park by the Catholic Church. He thought back to creature he had conjured in Dr Helen’s office had it taken over the doctor completely or would it leave her now the  mushrooms’ curses piled upon Beth now she had left the office. But, he thought sadly, would it  slowly transform Dr Helen into that misshapen, leprous creature into the antithesis of the wondrous psychiatrist

They got out of the car and under the weight of the sun walked to where the Lover’s walk began, or ended. To their surprise they saw without going down the side path skirting the church that led to the river was barred over with a sign saying:

Closed. Tree Felling in Progress.

Together they turned back disappointed and without speaking went up to the defunct rail-less railway and platform where a little further along was a picnic area with a panoramic view over the bend in the river. However this too was barred with a similar sign. They tutted in unison.

Almost back at the car Ray told her he was going to walk up to the chemist and she could pick him up outside.

‘Don’t take the pills til you get back to the flat.’

‘I thought we were going for a run to Banchory.’

‘No,’ she said bad temperedly. ‘I’m tired. I’ll just take you up the hill,’

‘Fine,’ he said and walked as fast as he could away.

Straight away he almost collided with a lycra and his bicycle he swerved passed it and walked quickly back up the valley, crossing the railway line with no rails and the empty platform of the local station that closed sixty years ago, passed the red house and up his steep muddy shortcut using the trunk of a small tree to push himself up now to the next exhausting and painful incline instantly wanting to lie down once he’d met the main road again but he pushed his way on and into the chemist.

He hadn’t seen Beth drive by and presumed she was still at the car park suffering through the hell of one of her migraines.

The Grass, as he called her, in her black clothes with black hair and the black look she gave him as he pushed his way in was alone at the dispensary counter. He liked to call her The Grass as he was always buying far too many boxes of proplus and codeine and he’d heard her blabbing to Amber the Lady Pharmika who’d later given him a hard time about  it when he was hungover and really didn’t need a telling off that day.  He bought shaving foam while the prescription was being filled out. He didn’t have to wait long. As he did he remembered her first day when he told her she suited the place already and she had smiled, but she was just pretending to smile. He couldn’t remember her real name.

Beth’s yellow car was parked outside, but she wasn’t in it. For a moment a new panic started but then he saw her coming out of the library next to the chemist. They mirrored each other getting into the car opening the doors at the same time and closing them with a slam like the furling and unfurling of the wings of a yellow parrot. Neither of them spoke as they drove back up to the house at the top of the valley. He persuaded her to have a cup of coffee. Reluctantly as she had so many things to do, yet she, more tired than she had been for such a long time sat in the garden while he went in and put on the kettle.

On the sideboard he crushed up the sedatives with a large silver spoon. Put half of into each of their cups with some golden syrup  and took the cups out to the garden. She scowled at him as if she were sick of looking at his tear-streaked face she had had to witness since the baby, had been a baby.

Sipping the hot sweet liquid she said that’s nice, he took a big gulp and watched as she drank hers in the garden’s heat. Soon they were both asleep and dreaming on the grass.

Beth wasn’t sure where she was waking from a dream or dreaming the July sun shone down on her she was sitting in the grass with her back resting on a dry stane dike with her mobile phone at her ear words were singing out of her mouth but she didn’t know who she was speaking to someone was looking at her but she didn’t turn her head to see who it was just kept her eyelids almost pressed together by the heat she could hear the voice on the other end of the mobile but didn’t know who it was who was speaking or what they were saying some foreign language she had never learnt she almost turned to see who was looking at her she didn’t feel uncomfortable under the stare only familiarity companionship love she wanted to ask the voice on the mobile who they were but knew she would be misunderstood so she ended the call pulling herself off the grass whoever was looking at her, stopped, moved their gaze and now could only see his back turned from her walking away along the path in the direction she was sure they had just come the figure was only a few strides ahead and she followed now beside her a dog walked with them it might have been a short way they had walked or much longer but the dog barked and she could see they were walking along a muddy path by the river what river she did not know and figure ahead of her hadn’t turned and the dog barked and barked happily as it went to the water she threw a stick and the him slid into the slow flow of the river and swam out she called the dog back and reluctantly he re-emerged and lay the stick at her feet so she tossed it for the him again and again further out than before and the river slick hound found it and swam back to the muddy bank before she had a chance to call come back the figure his stick with the back turned towards her it was still only a few strides ahead she started following again and the dog swimming returned and walked beside her ahead the figure turned round a bend in the path passing out of sight and she hurried her forwards and when they came back into view they were sitting in the grass at the side of the path a fire was blazing and a pan of water was boiling bent over the pan of water the figure fed the water with somethings one after another and stirred the mixture with a stick when she sat across the fire from the figure she was proffered the pan and was told to drink the water now it was quite cool but despite the reassurance of the words tentatively  she took a few sips then swallowed more gulp after gulp until the pan was dry Beth wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or waking up from a dream or dreaming.

Ray was standing over her with a broad grin on his face; she smiled sleepily.

‘I thought you were dead,’ he told her.

‘No, I’m fine.’

He searched with his third eye:

The ghist were gone there were no spiders no webs here no lepers only a golden, sun coloured  dog licking her face greedily as if she tasted divine.

‘That was good tea,’ she said, then remembered the tea had been in the dream, but he had given her the tea before she fell into the dream talking to someone she didn’t know on a mobile who spoke in an unfamiliar language.

Ray moved away and stood over the place where the old storm toppled tree had been and saw that there was a ring of mushrooms growing as if they had been there forever.

He turned back to her and told her matterfactly that she was going to have a wonderful summer.   

 

(4199 words)

 

Jealousy wears a wrist watch

by Adam Parry

 

One

 

Jealousy wears a wrist-watch

Always sheltering from the rain

Watching all the trains roll by

But never getting on.

 

Two

Beauty carries a switch blade

And doesn’t care at all, all

disguises perfect and

she slips away unseen.

 

Three

Joy wears a fresh new smile,

playing in the rain, has only time for

Simple things, and greets the day as friends

she drives and takes them in her car dry out of the rain.

 

Four

Time carries a tuning-fork

To tinker with pianos he loves,

he’ll meet

along the way.

 

 

Five

Love has a head full of song.

Love gizz it laldy and all her

audiences cheer, but sings on when she’s

not onstage as she walks alone in her dreams.

 

Six

Hate doesn’t need a smile,

or switch-blades, doesn’t need to deceive,

only Love sang songs to hate and hate ran away

 hides now in his hate-filled cave.

 

 

 

July 27^th.  By Adam Parry

 

“Colour in my heart,” the lion cried

from the dot to dot picture I had made.

“Make me look serene yet ferocious

that I may seem to clutch brightness

with my golden stare,

make my land a Kaleidoscope, as you

touch colour to the savannah and sun where I belong.”

 

I took some blue and gold and dew

 coloured in the lions land

put texture and tricks of the light

the pencil drew out of me.

As if meditating over the surprises of time

as I inspect the sun.

I display the light upon the lion’s mane.

Unthought-of, in a thoughtless moment,

the lion on the paper

roared with pleasure at the land I had made for him.

 

 

MY LOVE  ( for Lara ) by Adam L Parry.

 

 

My love turned into a lesson in the

singing sunshine.

Could I ascend to star of the day?

Out beyond the star ripped black

and play on light strings, bending time.

Hearing someone play on strings far away,

far away denting into the new light.

Descending beyond the star ripped storm.

On Saturdays my love returns and plays violin

Out into the winter’s day.

She smiles by Adam Parry

She smiles with only half her face

the stars eclipse the other side

she waits for morning

for the sun to revive

brighten her downcast eyes

eyes that mainly look away

hidden by the blackness of her hair

dew diamonds there as if

she has waited up all night

she smiles as she stares away

from others faces

yours and mine

yet I never knew her smile was in her tears

and in her voice and behind the eclipse of stars.

 

Winter WARMTH BY ADAM PARRY

 

Wisps of mist rise up from the river

twisting in between the snowclad roofs

and chimney pots

mingling there with the smoke,

a coal burning fire sparks of burnt amber,

a child waiting patiently for morning

when a new advent leaps up to a day

of expectation, the drifting snow whispering her to sleep,

a holiday with her snowman and his new hat.

The cat leaps clear the path of snow.

The child waltzes, spins and dives

and runs inside

looking for a new coat for her snowman.

O Flood! by Adam Parry

 We lost bright fiefdoms,

celestial cities born before God.

artisan's masterpiece's lost in a heart-beat.

So age-tempered hero, hero no longer

just a part, a forgotten line, long cast off

a god with a black-heart, jealous tears and with 

a blast of his rage all the heavens changed.

The flood wept all knowledge away, knowledge now

so dearly sought

'til the tower's of the old dream

replay in many different ways.

 

Hymenoptera by Adam Parry

 

‘Who are you talking to?’

‘Talking? I was just muttering to myself.’

‘Call that muttering? If you mutter any louder you’ll wake the dead.’

‘Aye. And they probably haven’t slept for days with you going on all the time.’

‘Oh, shut up and put the telly on.’

She settles back pointing at the TV remote. Alex sat on the edge of the sofa’s arm rest, perched almost on thin air, flicking channels.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped.

‘Three.’

He left the remote on the arm rest on his way out onto the street. The cat followed him out. He almost forgot about the rotten plank at the front door, at the last second he stepped over it, telling himself to remember to fix it, and walked into the path of a figure. Tom. Tom had a couple of apartments on the other side of the house. One for his large collection of mirrors, the other for his two Alsatians. Alex guessed Tom was back from the pub. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce Tom was back from the pub. He wondered, anxiously, if they’d talk.

‘Cath in?’

‘Fraid so. I’m off out.’

‘Nice to see the bonds of marriage are so easily torn asunder.’

‘I’m just going to the shop, Tom.’

‘Yeah right.’ He passed him down the steps. ‘See ya.’ At the gate at the end of the weed-encroached path, with its two green painted posts, the cat waited patiently for him. She hid her disappointment that instead of going to the left, to shops and cat food, away from the shops towards, towards, he didn’t know where towards. Or maybe he was going away. His footsteps echoed loudly on the otherwise quiet street, amber lit, streetlights spaced as regularly as his footfall.

Maybe after all he would go back the way to the shops, but he didn’t stop, nor turn around, not yet as the cat raced ahead of him in and out of the light urging him to turn back. Mentally he made a shopping list as he moved out of the orange haze into the main body of the darkness and into her arms.

‘You took your time,’ she admonished him as he held her, their lips brushing each other into faint smiles. She wasn’t warmly dressed in only a thin jacket, it’s black hood covering her blonde hair like a cowl. She huddled into him, almost inserting herself into his warm aura, the cold in her melting into him. She sheltered there and he held her until she stopped shivering.

His smile slipped as he whispered to her. ‘I can’t go back there.’

She would say there was nowhere else to go or that he had to be patient so he took her hand so she wouldn’t speak and walked out of the darkness. Unnoticed, a web of blue light held their hands together.

After a minute she said. ‘Let’s just walk.’

‘And talk.’

‘Talk too.’ She looked up at him, her eyes questioning. He had never seen eyes quite like hers, not merely blue, but cerulean.

‘What about?’

‘Let’s not think about that just yet.’

‘Just walk.’

‘Yeah.’

They walked to the University Buildings. They heard raucous sounds of a band in the Union. She turned him towards the sounds. ‘Let’s go in.’

They needed a student union card to get into the gig he was about to turn away, thinking of other places they could go, when she magically produced a card, and the bouncers let them in. She wanted to dance and dragged him onto the dance floor before they’d even ordered a drink. After the first track, he was exhausted by the jerking and jigging about that he called dancing. She would not let him go, and they danced then as if levels of energy and time itself didn’t exist, the power of the music, twisting them with pleasure, kept him on his feet, with her face before his. She is so rare, he thought. I just realised at this moment I am truly alive and that is because of her.

The music was ceaseless, he wavers slightly on the waves and crescendos of the music, she takes his hand and mercifully out into the bright lit stairwell, with a refreshing breeze coming in the Union entrance and washing over them. There was no-one else about and he reached hold of her and they began kissing, their hands instinctively clutching into clothes and flesh. With his touch he remade her and with her eyes she spun fire into him, each re-exploring the strangers they had become to one another in the time they had spent  apart.

He would tell her he loved her, but she would probably tell him to shut up. They were one being in the stark stairwell in the cold, oblivious of the invading wind and the drunken students, kissing as if it were a thing newly invented. He told her he loved her, and her blue eyes opened inches from his own, About them the sound of music diminished and the wind dissipated.

‘I have to show you,’ she said.

In a second they were standing at the front of Alex’s house, standing in the flower-bed staring into the room through one of the wide bay windows. In the candle-light, the only light in the room, beside the bed Alex could see Tom on top of his wife Cath. Before rage took him over she grabbed his hand again and they found themselves back in the Union, once more dancing, dancing, she would not let him go.

As he stood still and she danced around him, all he could think about was that Cath was pregnant, and the endless image of Tom rutting into her pale flesh, pricked his head and his stomach with nausea. Alex managed to escape from her to the bar and ordered some vodka, and then again she was at his arm.

‘We need to get out of this city, now, right now. We’ll just get a taxi, fuck what it costs at least I don’t have to buy baby clothes now. You know I didn’t want her.’

In his bitterness, his eyes pleaded with her, but hers were closed, her body rocking attuned to the music. It seemed to Alex she was shutting herself off from him, like some ride in a fun-fair he had just got off, with the exit bar locked behind him. And Alex suddenly terrified saw that at any moment she was going to move off, through him to someone else.

So if this was the last time he decided to grab her, and he forced his lips onto hers and forced her lips open with his tongue and jaw, his hands squeezing her breasts as he forced her up against the bar. She didn’t stop him, no-one stopped them as he fucked Jackie in the Union’s half darkness with such frenzied desperation knowing that she would be gone from him, like a ghost slipping away before dawn.

Later he was walking back home in the amber lights electric flicker he was alone again, Jackie lost in his fumble for students, groping his half limpness, Jackie forgotten again in the haze of kissed faces, smeared lipstick, endless eyeliner. At the gate his cat awaited him, he noticed Tom’s light was off, Cath still had the TV on and in the blue glow looked made her look like a rather scary Pictish warrior.

He tripped up the stair narrowly avoiding breaking his leg in the hole by the front door. He smiled as he came in and said, ‘What’s on love?’

‘You were a long time. You missed your programme.’

‘Never mind. I went to Jac’s grave.’

‘Oh.’

‘It was cold, give us a cuddle.’

‘I’ll come with you next time.’

‘Yes,’ he kissed her. ‘That would be nice,’

Free Spirit and River by Adam Parry

Free spirt

 ... until a wind took me

from my aimless ways, drove

into window panes, walls,

a battered thought uncaught.

From within me comes the wind that calls.

from within a secret stream of thought

of a bright and luminous love

that can take, but never break me.

********

River

Above the first flow

that runs over rocks and salmon

passed trees and bends in it's banks

beneath the black and blue of the sky

those greens and golds of autumn-land,

above this first flow another river runs.

One of all colours containing

the magic of  a universe of thoughts,

shaded and hued

cleansing the Universe anew

this river flows.

As a wood-Pidgeon

startles me from dreams

she lends me her wings 

mends my mouth with songs 

and I fly

thoughtless

to the opposite bank

and make my nest.

Dawn's Chaos by Adam Parry

Like a clown still white-faced from last nights circus

he wanders through walls smoke first

whispering sin to the half-light of day.

A rain cloud comes,

new ghosts like weeping winds to tame the day.

He ascends through a rang of moments,

plastic as the coversheets over antique troves of  treasure.

He need not thieve anymore,

or give gifts to the pure.

His thoughts grow ugly with unaccountable dreams,

He flops upon a bus seat and waits for journey's end,

where the blistering blue awaits,

his bright lips red throwing new surprises

onto faces reflected in the window.

Lost lover's kiss by Adam Parry

 Even in the rain lover's kiss

may only kiss in the rain

even in the sunbraw summer.

Even in the wind even firm feet

fly free. .As the snow melts

 and the trees drip even the strongest slip

in the slush on the river's lovers path  

that weaves through life 

with all it's seasons

and no -one to shelter from the rain where my love and I

always kiss.

Running out of time and The beggar's coinage

 The dictator today has time 

to watch the birdies fly away

enjoy the view of his hills

spot the dots of people down below

merge into a scene he has no control.

He cannot synchronize those birds as

he would wish or even melt the snow.

He cannot know the thoughts of those down below.

Our dictator knows even his power

cannot make beauty more fair. 

*******

He seems so ill to them

so fallen

so rich with dirt

and pills and penny pieces

and his own private 

purple haze

to those who deign

to gaze at him, all, so loaded with

their own stones, 

never, in this sun of eyes, ever

going to get home.

To them I write, 

in their dark and light

lost in the mixing colours,

to her he loves, this love

the Junkie could not kill.

 

Dream by Adam L Parry.

 

Red bright, in my beautiful dream, a snow queen

long locked away- our

eyes met over the ice-cream counter-

a green bag over her shoulder

of plastic and black

her pale face, unmarred,

unfreckled, she sleepwalks

to work, dreams her own

dreams counting the footprints in the snow

I left behind.

Perhaps, perhaps the snow

Queen will come to me as I sleep

In Beauty.

The Mirror Bar ( FOR LARA) by ADAM Parry

 So strange that dream,

lucid , leering, it comes again.

She looks weightless as a whisper

so strange so many dreams all special effects in her daymares

 so unaware as kaleidescopes mirror in her blue, blue eyes.

Secure in her own colours, needs no tints or photoshop

to make her more beautiful 

 her eyes not yet a faded blue prized with life her blue she won.

let her lie, gently her eyes close. let her dream of the day sleepers

their stares and the of wonder of the lightkeepers.

A week in a dreamdrift

 On Monday

I met an octopus

with silver wings

but she flew away 

as  soon as I learnt

her language. 

On Tuesday

a green cat

with 

daisy chains  asks me

if I'd smelt her

but I never understand.

On Wednesday

my octopus came back

while the green cat

watched in the grass,

she asked me

if I needed to fly.

On Thursday

she took me there and nowhere

and little later

every, every where

and our green cat got lost

wishing for 

singing and silver wings.

On Friday

the weaved woman

walked my way so

surprised by the flying cat

and the new hat

the octopus bought.

On Saturday

the weaved 

woman came my way

I'd walk with all day

but later she flew away

and made me cry.

On Sunday no time

to rest, I wake up in the 

water

and wonder at the clouds

all of us flying now

like rain in the wind.

 

 

The river went by Adam Parry

Once upon a time in the little land of sleep there lived a lassie called Loz who loved to dance  with the Fairies over the land here and there and back again. Most mornings she’d watch the old man heading for the river a walking-stick in both hands who tentatively made his way to the river’s edge where he clumsily sat by the river as the river went, thinking thoughts he had never thought before.

Loz and the Fairies danced faster than the river went. Up, up, up Loz went to the top of the tree clad valley and back down then up the further slope from the river dashing and dancing between the pine trees  then hand in hand the ring of Fairies barrelling down to the river like a mad twelve-headed monster thing she danced in circles splashing in the water, laughing and happy as new-borns in a fresh green world. Up, up she dances on, as the Fairies flag and go to sleep, up to her favourite tree, atop her favourite brae and aloft in the branches she would stare all night at the beauty of the moving’s of the moon and the stars imagination.

She woke again remembering the laughter in the dream where she was  air-dancing feeling like a miracle. Soon her Fairy friends took Loz dancing down the hills passing by the old man at the river-edge his boots off his socks off his feet cooled by the fresh water. He turned to see the dancing and such perfect laughter and he laughed too long and loud at the vision as if he had never laughed before.

Loz woke one day high in her treetop thinking it was still night-time, the stars were veiled and the moon hid behind the dark perhaps a darker circle in the unnerving night. All the silent night around her had stilled her want to dance, so slowly she made it to the riverbank in search for the old man who was always there and decided to walk along the riverbank hoping to find the old man with his two sticks.

He couldn’t have got far, there was no sign of the Fairy folk her best friends hidden from her as if  they were afraid of the dark. At times she called their names but soon got frustrated when her friends never came out to play. She felt abandoned and alone, angry also so she screamed out her Fairy friends names, still no-one came and she wanted to weep.

Instead she went to river bank in the cold air of the fair vale excommunicated from the sun, she knelt there on the edge of the bank her face in the water drinking deep sucking it in as if the cold would wake her from this nightmare. Her hair sodden with water, rivulets of water streamed down her face as she stood she started to look for the old man but she never found him all those thoughts he had never thought before gone as fast as the river went.

She was freezing and weak with despair she searched the prison of unlight for the remembrance of sunlight, but she saw no sign, so tired, so weak, so abandoned as  a storm of snow fell she dropped to her knees and would not move again, so slowly she froze and she knew she would never move again.

One day in the little land of dreams a Fairy found Loz, frozen her laughing face gone covered with hoar frost, her sparkling laughing eyes frosted closed, her body stiff and broken unwilling to dance. The fairy cried and did not dance again.

On another day another old man with tender feet came into grey lands of sleep and as the other man sticks gripped in both his two hands, and as if he were following a pilgrim trail found himself at the river’s bank, near of pool caught by the rocks about. Whistling through his teeth as he slowly lowered his bare, sore feet in the water and despite himself cried out of the thrill of the freezing water. He put his sticks aside and waited for the cold to numb the pain in his poor feet. A heavy rain fell and he huddled under his coat pulled over his head and so silent and so still he watched as the river went.

Almost tranquil cocooned in the dark wet of this land where the stars were not watched or the sun warming. He had decided that tomorrow he would cross the river and go in search of greener happier lands, he had seen not a soul in his journey across the land of sleep as if the land was deserted except for nightmares and even they hid from him. He fell asleep wrapped in his sodden clothes and dreamt of a dancing happy girl who went to where the river went.

Rain fell down on him and soon the wet set him off shivering, the moment of dawn had come and gone all the land of sleep was lost in the awful darkness. He wrapped his clothes tightly about him warding off the invisible rain, burrowed his face in his coat. Then he saw it, a cold light, a faded circle, hidden. The sight of the light scared, no, terrified him and he ran barefoot to find shelter from the baleful illumination.

The sudden light hurt his eyes, helpless tears from his eyes made him want to claw at the rain soggy mud of the riverbank, made him want to hide from the light he had once thought so beautiful, he dug harder and when the hole was deep enough he jumped down and pulled down mud that covered him, blinded by the mud falling on his face.

Thankful now in his burrow, the quarter light of  moon in the restless rain, was gone from his view, and he felt at once that darkness of his living grave was much more welcoming than the monstrous light beyond, and here too it was a lot warmer and soon the chill in bones subsided. He could have hidden, there almost breathing the mud, forever. Yet as the palsied sun rose the terrifying ghost ivory white went where it would and as if somehow aware, he dug himself out eventually, stood at edge plastered from foot to head in dirt.

Too make matters even worse he had unmanned himself, he blushed at the thought of it, then laughed to himself, who would notice in all this  he crawled to the river’s edge. The river roared as if it had become the whole world, the river went too fast disorientating his eyes, spray from the river startled his face. He stripped and washed himself washed the clothes, once again he blushed at his stains yellow and brown that had been left as reminder of his fear

Yellow sunlight, battling sun, lost sun forced him to put on his still damp clothes, he found his sticks and was filled with relief. Now he had been restored to a level of pride he humbly allowed himself he stood tall strong fist gripping his sticks he looked up at the sun and the yellow haze looked down amazed and Lenny his sticks in his two hands, dances across the river as if he were buoyed above the surface as a he remembered a song he loved.

One day Loz dried her clothes on a rock. That didn’t take long for if they were still damp she could dance herself dry. But a new tiredness overcame her and she could barely breath she took off her shirt and skirt and took of her shoes. Then naked she flew into the morning freer than ever before. Then she flew into dark pines and the Fairy-folk sing, can sing again and they found Loz staring down into the valley. She saw another man walking his walking sticks through the sunless land. She saw him make his way to the river, holding he sat his sticks in both hands he looked out  the winter and saw her red shoes by the river bank and her clothes. She climbed down to the valley. He watched the water heard the noise of it. Loz sat down beside of him, smiled at the old man and asked him to dance.

So they did dance hand in hand along the bank then back again. Her clothes were dry and she dressed and took the old man’s hand and they danced so swiftly and so far in the once green valley. They ended up back on the river, Loz was hot and felt restricted in clothes, now she stripped and stood proudly and took his hand and once more as if the old man was superman he never stopped and spun around faster and faster never flagging, now back at the riverbank watching the way the river went  and singing the songs the fairy folk had taught Loz and river roared swiftly by. The hidden sun blind to it.

The ghost circle of light bewitched the man, he stared as if he had never seen moonlight before. He was not afraid, nor was he tired after dancing all day, now still he needed to dance, beneath the moon as beautiful as a baby’s face, transfixed until the parody of sunrise when Loz awoke. Then let us dance and they jumped up on tiptoes and fell dancing on the top of the river water, the river burbled and gurgled with pleasure as they spun holding each other in their arms, and river roared with laughter together they pirouetted and danced the length of the river going where it went. Still they dance and the flow took them far beyond the bends in the river, faster and faster they danced so eager to escape the sun abandoned little land of sleep.

And as they went further the fairy folk sang from the bank, serenading the river making Loz feeling less alone she took Lennie’s hand. The river went beneath them the dancers held safe by the tides while they witnessed a seagull watching, more came the seagulls flocked and, she jumped up to catch one but it eluded her. Tired on the cliffs the fairies stopped singing sadly that Loz and Lennie were going where the river went, tears too that the would never see Loz again and they wept into the water. But one of the fairies flew to Loz from the cliff. Loz’s Helen, her first fairy friend who taught her dance. Now she was air dancing as she did in her dreams Helen was drenched and Lennie put her on his shoulder and a rush of the current took them further from blackened land.

They danced all day faster as if they were a whirling dervish, they watched the sky that was of different shades of blue with opal clouds fresh-made in the sky.

She lost Lennie above the roar and rumble of the water and all the fairies delighted the river with songs only fairy folk sing. Soon the river was to arrive soon to where the river went and a great waves propelled them along and then another wave the sea smashed into them and drowned the valley and the fairies’ songs were swot away, but Loz reached up atop the wave she screamed out new songs and ecstatically pogoed on the wave, waltzed on the surge of the wave, the river reached the sea and they fell into the salty water, swam to the beaches and lay on the sand and laughed at the love in the little land of sleep and drifted off and dreamt of another day in the land of sleep.

Peterculter 2024