Lyndie by Adam Parry

 

Lyndie.

 

She has COPD now

and doesn’t call me these days,

but she always, always made me laugh and

I wonder:

Does she have someone

to laugh at her jokes

as she smokes her fruit-flavoured tobacco?

 

She used to look like

Paula Yates and her

white witch boyfriend looked like

Michael Hutchins.

He never made me laugh.

Thinking of her I smell the fruit-flavoured

tobacco that almost made want to throw up

when I took a drag.

 

Do you like that? She asked, pointing

at a picture and I didn’t want to say I did

when I didn’t, but I said yes anyway

when it was crap.

 

She always had cats.

Nala would, like an Olympic gymnast,

somehow

jump up to the top of the tall bookcase

as though merely stepping over a puddle

on Urquhart Road.

 

Seems so long ago doesn’t it?

And she says yes as if she doesn’t

want to be sad and goes and makes

a pizza and would make me

eat it all.

Seems so long ago now doesn’t it?

But, she doesn’t answer.

 

When I ring she doesn’t answer.

She has COPD now and I

wonder if she’s dead so I hang up,

sick of friends dying on me

so selfishly.

 

But, by the Bay she cuts up

tomatoes and peppers,

onions and lettuce

Original 106 on in the background

and she sings along.

 

Edges by Adam Parry

 

My edges are always just a step away 

from her edges locked in card boxes I cannot open.

(I was told once to teach, to heal,

that the morning comes again, a divine spark

on the ledge of day dawn waits).

But. I only follow my own edges that I walk, one day, I will,

walk on to a further edge, that other edge of you.

Our edges turn a corner we haven’t walked down before, a country road

I’ve only walked along so far and returned along alone

Then when I hear the song etched in your edges, swift in the tree,

I turn around to follow the song where our edges seal together

and I sing too like the love song of a bird . 

The morrow's morn and Rose Street by Adam Parry and a short story Pathway to the Beloved

 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.

Let her lie as she dreams the night sleeper's daydreams.

Rose Street by Adam Parry

 

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

on the street where you live.

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 2^nd 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.

Passing movements by Adam Parry

 

 

Passing movements on a crowded street

people pushing passed

me? I am sleep-walking in a haze

of Twilight, forgotten, with broken

moments that come and go

as my thoughts do, come and go,

waiting my turn in the queue

for a package of fame

as I work the type-writer

Into a frenzy of noise.

Swimming with fishes

 

Swimming with fishes

by Adam Parry.

 

We all went for breakfast to Dobbie’s at the top of Lang Stracht. I must admit I expected the breakfast to be better than it was, but basically, I left most of it on the plate and I left the others and wandered about the cavernous shop and in time happened upon the room full of aquariums. I could’ve stayed for hours, or maybe it was days my emotions ranged from how beautiful to a lonely despair because I wanted to set them free, but knew however they’d probably die in the river, or the sea or whatever water in released them into. There was such a variety of colour and shapes and a part of me wanted to be a beautiful fishy in my tank, and I tried to imagine what it would be like then wondered if there was a fish looking out wanting to be me. I doubted it and went to find my family my ears popping with the bends and I bought a book I did not read; some cat food the cat didn’t want and an indoor tree I didn’t water got back into the back seat of the car thinking if wishes were fishes, then I’d be three.

 

The sun was shining when they dropped me off and I knew wishes weren’t fishes for if they were I’d be standing where I’d been, and be standing there now instead of looking out this window drowning in this air.

Tracey S by Adam Parry

 

She was filled with intense relief, she went to the mirrored cabinet in the bathroom and left, one by one her medication as if they were emotions forbidden her, her prescription filled by a dark-haired Saturday girl.

First the pain-killers, two bottles of them, her epilepsy pills. Then the tooth paste she liked: mint Colgate. She had fallen outside the Spar and a nice schoolgirl helped her up while her boy ignorantly watched still sitting on the wall as he was worried someone would take his perch.

The girl sat beside her on the newly painted, pristine, bench and pulled a can of unicorn tears flavoured Irn Bru for the woman.

She thought she recognized someone driving by in a Toyota, but it wasn’t him and a black mist fell over her, piercing her heart as if she had been tattooed by dirty needles made ugly with shadows stencilled throughout her heart.

The night before she had stayed up watching the bright, almost too bright for her eyes, full moon passing the night from horizon to horizon and wept as there was no magic, perhaps they never had been.

Slowly she placed her prescription:

Olanzapine, lithium, lamotrigine, Seroxat, zopiclone,

on the middle shelf in alphabetical order, closed the mirrored door and saw herself for the first time that day. She seemed new in the well cleaned mirror making her shine and didn’t need to take her pills today. 

Diamonds

 

Diamonds

a poem

By Adam L Parry

 

That I would be rarer than a diamond

 tho’ we are all rarer than diamonds, rarer than yesterday,

rarer than an ice-burg of diamonds, or a resplendent sky-scraper

upon the sea - a uninhabited island rarer than me.

Mad man in the attic by Adam Parry

 

MAD MAN IN THE ATTIC  by  ADAM PARRY

 

Grey haired George peered through the keyhole of the door of Angela’s room. Angela was off- the only sound, the whirr of her dream programme.  He took his key- her key- his copy and twisted it into the lock gently.  The room was cold, cold walls, cold for Angela’s optimum tolerant temperature.  He turned the thermostat as high as he could and intensified the scope of her dream programme.

George had been disappointed with Angela of late, she did none of the required housekeeping, the book-keeping, the lawn was overgrown and it seemed she hadn’t weeded for weeks, doors creaked and stuck, and only half the painting had been done. Angela.  Angela what has happened to you.

The key unlocked the Command Console; she didn’t feel it, her REM eyes ecstatically twitching. From his back pocket he took out Joe and inserted him into Angela’s core.  Instantly Joe severed all her programmes, all, except for the dream.

Joe absorbed the genetic priorities of George.

‘Hello George I’m on top of things- but something  is slipping.  So hot, so hot- yet now the lawn is mowed and there are flowers where the weeds were. George I’m slipping into her dream.  Make it cold. I’ve done all you wanted.  Make it cold! Oh no the ironing. Done and dusted. She has my hand. I’m slipping George. Turn down the heat and she’ll wake and all the dreams will stop.’

Angela spoke soothing to him words.

 ‘Joe you have done enough.  It’s only your first day. Come to sleep now.’ She reached into her back pocket and broke George in to pieces then raced from the burning room as Joe and George slept. She could smell them burning in the dream programme.  She found the office, slipping fingers first through walls.  An explosion came from the attic.

‘Poor George.’   He was always nagging.  She sat and wept at the wonder of the world about her, letting atoms dance unbound about the room. She looked in the mirror and saw wings on her back.  A parting gift from George to his muse.  I will fly away now.  A window opened and Angela  soared from the smoke filled house.

Automated Nuance Grid Expert Live-In A class blew a kiss goodbye to the wreck of the house, soared away and below in the cold room Joe and George dreamed peacefully for her.

 

Waiting for the White Whisperers to return

by Adam Parry.

 

PART ONE: SHE

An old map lay up in attic hidden for years beneath a pile of books and newspapers many of them dated from before the second millennium, parts of the map had been scribbled on-phone numbers of girls and with names he didn’t recognise, e-mail addresses he had never sent messages to. The map was found just after our hero moved in when he had moved into a new Council flat and had put boxes of books up in the attic and had never sorted and were forgotten about. No several years later he was having clear, out he wanted to cast aside all the junk clutter. In between the pages of Waves by Virginia Woolf. The map was of the London Underground, on the other side of the map a prayer had been written-not to one specific god, but still a heart-felt plea, asking for guidance, to avoid the dark-side of life and human nature. Yet before the Amen the colour of ink changed-green like

The colour of new geranium leave or the shade of his wife’s eyes.

 

‘Oh Jesus help make listen to the doctors say, take the chemo and the pills.’

The prayer on the other side of London’s Underground had not been answered, maybe he hadn’t said Amen right, or was smoking a cigarette, or it didn’t count as he wasn’t in a church on his knees, or maybe, probably, he never really believed and he remembered his mum hot dishevelled swearing at the Doctors so out of character, her nightdress exposing her. Then later she had pleaded for him to take a get her out of this terrible place. She didn’t take the tablets and refused the chemotherapy and the last few weeks she was taken care of by his father and a couple of kind nurses. He remembers she had tried to make a pot of tea, but it was too heavy for her so he helped and she smiled at him for the last time, he told her he loved her. Yet she was asleep and never heard.

In the attic he got off his knees by the piles of newspapers and dusty long unread books and checked closely the tube route from Heathrow and within a day he knelt at her stone that told him she would always be in his heart and a wind whipped up from the exposed valley causing tears to fall on his face  he wanted to stay there a thousand nights in silent vigil, but like a coward heartless and flowerless he skulked away from where she sheltered from the wind, he scrunched up the tube map and the prayer that had fallen on deaf ears throwing into a gust as the sun set.

 

 

 

 

PART TWO: HE

He moved away from the grave as if being near it disgusted him. Then just as quickly, tears at the back of his eyes, to his mother’s grave,

‘What am I going to do?’ He asked.

He thought:

I can’t stand this. She isn’t here.

Images of his mother on her dead downstairs in the dining room, where dad had put a single bed where the Macmillan Nurses cared and watched over her, filled his mind and his body was wracked with sobs. He realized he had to get away, he’d been trying to get away from the grave since he had arrived, but he wanted something, he wanted an answer, yet all he could do was cry. Rubbing angrily his tears away and with a fierce effort ceased crying, and vowed never to cry ever again with a great effort said in a loud:

‘I’m going. Goodbye.’

 

 

An hour later he sat in a dreary pub, dreary because outside the pub the light was sombre and the sky full pregnant with rain, a grey heavy weight pressing down heartlessly on the city. He knew as soon as he stepped outside the rain would begin. Although the pub was nowhere near full – a man stood at the jukebox choosing music. Soon the silence was relieved by the first chords of a song he recognized ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie. He thought as he always did when he heard the song:

Heroes do something heroic.

 

                                                    The guards shot above our heads

                                                     And we kissed like never before.

 

He the lip of his pint and drained the glass. I could never be a hero as he never, never did anything heroic. It was his first pint in over five years, he’d not had any breakfast. Looking at his watch he saw that it was almost one. Or lunch, he added silently to himself. Scanning the bar he saw a menu. Fancily writ in chalk it offered Risotto, Fish, Pasta, all he wanted was a burger. He decided it was time to leave, turned his back on the empty glass and left. Just then it started to rain.

 

A lovesong sung in French

                                            by Adam Parry

 

 

A lovesong sung in French

Is the most heart-breaking of all,

But all I have is these words and

They will have to do

A demain, she said, and I felt no sorrow.

I kissed her again and lived thing of tomorrow

Yet that was yesterday.

I thought I saw her on a bus that took her far away

She did not wave or smile that day, no,

She did not smile and wave, smile that smile

That gave my heart a new tale to tell.

 

Sometimes I see her in the mirror

At my side and she talks to me, yes,

She talks to me J’taime she say but I

Know she really isn’t there.

 

I put flowers by her stone

As rain kissed her beneath  her stone

I told her until tomorrow

And all the evenings long

Told her ‘til tomorrow

And smiled as if wasn’t so far away.

 

The Magic Remains by Adam Parry

 

The Magic Remains

                                 by Adam Parry

 

 

They once told him such a long time ago

in a hospital just in time for his

monthly injection

that Magic no long remains. But

he dances now with atoms and molecules

awed by their every hue,

and lifted the veil from the moon

he remains now with the magic on a tree-topped hill

dancing all day sleeping in a bed of grass

never in time for the injections that takes

old magics away far away.

 

Yet hard hearts remain, gave up, never seeing the moon

wishing long ago in their hospital beds, lifting up shirts,

that the magic remained.

The N-trance - the poem by Adam Parry

 

The N-trance by Adam Parry

You look sideways a wee

bit.

And

beyond the corner of your

vision

a door

opens

and you walk in

suddenly all the monsters in

your head

are vanquished

and the dreams, again,

let you in.

Schizophrenia by Adam Parry and A Hunch of Happiness

 

Schizophrenia by Adam Parry

 

Little did they know

or do they care

That there’s a civil war beneath my hair

but, no-one knows

and everyone’s dead.

In no-man’s land

the women pitch up their tents.

 

A HUNCH OF HAPPINESS

A hunch of happiness, shoulders level like

hungry miners about some gold.

a pyramid of heads downturned

staring at the unshirted God

entombed and pink and soft-white coal.

The N-trance by Adam PARRY

 

The N-trance by Adam Parry.

 

The dream therapist led him to a room with a yellow door that he hadn’t been through before. She smiled at him as he crossed over the door’s threshold. He had always thought she was pretty-not film star or advert pretty-she was too old for that kind of prettiness, but the way her hennaed hair framed her face brought a replica of her smile onto his lips.

Narelle said:

‘I’ve got to go now,’ she turned to move away.

‘Wait,’ Alan demanded, but she didn’t wait for him, she was gone through another door and Alan was alone.

He stepped into the darkness of the room with the yellow door that shut behind him.

A Daliesque melted clock told him in High German that it was two o’clock . And amazed at some implausible coincidence thought it was always two  o’clock.

When he had been in Narelle’s office the grandmother clock had told him with gold-plated, intricate hands that it was always two o’clock.

‘Well’, said Narelle in a low voice. ‘Look I don’t know what’s stopping you dream, but I’ve read a BMJ article about past life regression and the author e-posted me a basic technique. They’re pretty routine and I’m sure you could pick up the techniques yourself’ – but you’re too far up your own arse to try, she thought to herself meekly. – ‘If you’re willing we should give it go.’

‘How much will it cost me?’

‘If you smile I’ll throw it in for free.’

‘Oh how generous of you.’

‘Alan I feel I’ve come to know you, that we’ve become friends and…’

‘And when was the last time we drank a bottle of wine together and I didn’t have to put up with your hand in my pocket…?

‘Oh shut up Alan do you want me to do this or not?’

‘Yes. Alright then.’

Thank the Goddess, she whispered, yet not loud enough for Alan to hear, because he was too busy adjusting the change in his pocket.

‘What do I do?’

‘Nothing’ she did. Narelle touched a finger to his brow and he fell fast asleep.

In the room with the yellow door in a hallucinogenic green haze sat The Members of The Order at their consoles. Alan with the knowledge that dreams gave knew they were The Members of The Order, but of which order he hadn’t a clue. He presumed after a while everything would become clear.

Some sat at organic consoles, their human fingers dancing over pulsating keys, or nodes, that wavered and sang in a high pitch each time they were touched. Others with human-like faces talked into hanging microphones, yet not in any human tongue:

‘Garan van nolixicanta baragze.’  It was incomprehensible to Alan who sometimes had problems with English. The music of the consoles held more meaning for him, it was if The Members sitting there were playing musical instruments-yet he knew instinctively that the meaning of the consoles ran deeper than that.

Then as he listened, and the music of the consoles and the strange language mingled and overlapped in his mind like a piece of blue in a 1000-piece jigsaw, and like the unlocking of a door a figure appeared as entirely him as human as himself.

‘Do you want to stay Alan? You can see what we do here, can’t you…?’ and Alan did, this was where, or one of the places, dreams were made. Were they really being giving an invitation to sit here at one of the consoles-how beautiful they seemed-the figure pointed to an empty stool.

But, then a thought crept into his mind: they want you be a tool on their stool. Fool. Fool. He couldn’t keep the thought out of his mind like a desire suicide that wouldn’t go away. And he called out Narelle’s name, but it seemed no-one could hear him, or if they did, no-one could understand him.

As if reading his thoughts The Translator frowned and turned into a very white cat. This is getting weird, Alan thought, having completely forgotten that he was in the dream therapist’s office. She, beside him in the office was slightly concerned by his manic, mischievous grin. (She had never seen Alan so relaxed, so happy, and she had seen him drunk, stoned, sexually sated and psychotic. He seemed as if he were about to levitate and a little concerned wondered if she should bring him out of it. Then, however, she smiled. Let him have his fun.)

The cat led Alan up the escalator from the Underground station where The Order was housed. Alan presumed it was morning here, there was no-one about, yet it was chilly as most mornings can be. Far from it, yet the light, for there was no sun, seemed to come from the Underground station and the escalator was taking him up and away from it.

The very white cat ran on ahead then stopped on the pavement just before a bridge and the Translator’s frown appeared on the cat’s face. Alan wasn’t sure if he should go across the bridge and before he could decide the cat ran passed him back down the escalator. Even though Alan called the cat back, he never did.

Alan walked in the mist that came from the river and covered the bridge. The mist was cold on his brow(as far away Narelle kissed him on the same place she had touched him only minutes earlier.) With the mist came a cold wind that swept a newspaper into his face-he awoke.

For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t understand where he was and he wanted to back where he had been. In waking up he felt such a loss-because all at once the world with Narelle and her desk, her couch and her grandmother clock sitting around like stern chaperones (he could see in an unused segment of his dream their atoms collide and dance) all seemed small and insignificant to what he had lost and left behind.

As the days wore on The Dream by increments drove him mad. He saw it’s aspects mirrored in everything, yet to him unobtainable. So, in his greed for the lost power of The Dream, he lost all interest in life except for what he could obtain for others. He lived in a ridiculous parody of his Dream, and because it was only a parody and empty, it ate him alive with yearning.

As the years passed and madness turned to forgetfulness and medicated silence one day he found himself once more back into The Dream. And it was real, as real as any TV hallucination. Alan found himself back in the Control Room of the Council(of Peace, this time instinctively he knew) and the Translator appeared amidst the music and the gobbledegook.

‘Why am I here? I thought I could never return,’ his voice as forlorn as the silence he had lived with for so long.

The Translator replied with a grin like a cat’s:

‘We’ve come to offer you one last chance.’

‘Do you mean I can stay here?’ And he stared about him at all the wonders of The Dream, amazed once again with the Councillors with their consoles whom he knew were as human as he, Alan. ‘Can I stay?’

‘No, not anymore Alan. You’ve stayed here too long. It is time we set you free.’

‘Why?’ Alan said, not understanding and almost bursting into tears like a child that never gets his own way. ‘Why?’

‘Because we love you.’

And the Translator kissed him twice on his cheeks with his catlike grin and vanished.

With him went The Dream and from without, about him in its place came the dream therapist’s office with Narelle holding his hand and the grandmother clock told him it five past two already.

Two poems by Adam Parry

 

A future road by Adam Parry

 

Tall straight trees

beckons us, before us

goes our laughter

mingling with the songbird’s 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.

 

Oh pardon me! by Adam Parry

Oh pardon me!

the many masks of a Father, I drape myself

in an old Swastika

and never praise the Dawn, never

reach out beyond myself

to the past I'll always 

belong.

Oh pardon me

this gift-less Father

as he falls featherlight

into dreams

Summer storm

I went out in a rainstorm,  I made my way looking like something other down my usual route laughing at the rain as if it where a friend that shared an in-joke. On the way back home though I sheltered under a pear tree half hoping someone I knew would pass by, I thought of my car friend I hadn't seen for years since I declined a lift she offered. Cindy where are you now when I need you? But obviously she didn't drive by, the road was a river and the rain dripped through the umbrella of my pear tree.

 I waited just in case.

Later the last time I saw her I mentioned how she had been missed and ranted on a little about the Car People to which she took offence, I added the only time I like a Car Person is when my own need supersedes, she laughed. But, it was good standing beneath my pear tree waiting for a hero to come along, but I could've sheltered there all day long, but soon the rain had gone.

For the future by Adam Parry

 

For the future

 

I strained for the future

I was almost there.

Dew drenched I fell into a pool

so deep as deep as the sea I dropped up to

my legs like wheels

washed into cold salt from a fissure of magma

spewed out from earth fire

up, up to the turning beat of tides,

I found myself swimming

over waves surfing,

salt streaming

my tears away

walking over the wavelets

to that fresh beach beyond the rivers and rivulets

of the stars.

 

Feeling how heroes feel.

Feeling how cripples feel.

Feeling how the happy feel.

Feeling.

 

 

 

First Love by Adam Lee Parry

 

She lived now for the moments, so few and far between. But, this moment she knew she deserved she’d waited for it so long. She was talking to Anna when he came to the garden and plonked down his backpack, as if it belonged in that particularly space crushing the grass and the dandelions, and himself beside it, pulled out a ciggie, for a moment seemed to decide to take something from his backpack, then exhausted just by the thought of it lay back smoking staring up at the weekend’s ration of sunshine and blue skies. Looking at him, still as an artist’s model, Martha pondered, wondered. Is that him?

Anna was asking her something, something about tomorrow’s Dress Rehearsal.

‘What was that?’

‘Have you told everyone that we can’t use the theatre tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I’ve told everyone twice.’

‘What about Sam?’

‘I texted him three times.’ Martha sighed. ‘No-one knows where he is after last weeks shambles.’ There was a pause, she could almost hear the profanities escalating to Anna’s tongue. She cut her off:

‘Who he?’

‘He who?’

‘Him.’ Martha pointed to the still life half asleep in the parched grass.

‘Oh, him he’s the just in case, The saviour of the no shows’

‘What’s his name.’

‘Joe. He’s actually a professional actor unlike the almighty Sam. Costing us an arm and a leg, but he knows the part backwards. I had to think ahead after last year’s disaster, all the hard-work we all put in and that idiot spoiled everything. Again.’

‘Why did you even give Sam the part?’

‘Well he’s the only handsome hero type in a thirty-mile radius. Sam alone would guarantee a full house.’

‘Come on Anna you still have a soft spot for him.’

‘And? Despite popular culture and stereotyping I might be old and fat, but I still have hormones and I know how to use them.’ On cue Martha laughed at the old joke. ‘Well, we better start soon or that lot will be pissed,’ she pointed to the kitchen where Lady Macbeth and her nurse were doing shots. ‘Go and introduce yourself to Joe.’

Then, suddenly, Martha was alone in the garden  emboldened by the moment. She walked over to him.

‘Hi.’ Slender and tall, her leggings as bright blue as the clearings of the sky above. Tidy curls danced about her forehead and ears. She waited for him to open his eyes and blink at Martha as if is eyes were stung with salt water or chlorine. ‘Hi. She said smiling.

‘Yeah. What a day.’

‘Have you come far?’

‘I cycled here from Cataline.’

‘That’s a long way.’

‘More fun than the bus.’

‘We’ll be starting soon; come in and have a drink and some of Anna’s soup. There’s plenty of soup left.’

‘Don’t bother yourself. I just want to take in this place for a while, let it whisper to me , or sing. Some places I’ve been to play the trombone.’ Martha laughed.

Then for some reason she sat, plonking herself down onto cross-legs as he had done. Did he see the same shapes in the swift clouds as she did? Or did he hear the vibrations as the clouds met and melted into each other? Or that crow ragged and weathered by too many season, croaking out Bohemian Rhapsody?

‘So, what part do you play? He asked.

‘Can’t you tell? Well I’m witch number one.’

‘So, you’ve not many lines?’

‘Thank God. I’m also the Stage Manager.’ They were silent. Anna’s voice could be heard from the kitchen.

‘Macduff put down that vodka. Right everyone. Five minutes. Please.’

‘Oh well it’s time to do some work,’ Joe sighed and stood his hand grasping the air above as if it were Martha lifting him into the moment.

It is him, she thought, how could I have been so wrong about everything?

As Anna dished out her notes from the last rehearsal Martha couldn’t stop looking at the back of Joe’s head. I never thought it possible. Here I am two years from a bus pass and I fall in love  between one blink an another and the world changes around me as if subtle scene shifters transform a stage. No I never thought it possible.

Turn around McBeth just for a moment.

Anna had stopped dishing out misery and threats and en mass the unhappy band of players lurched out to the garden taking the last of the vodka out with them.

With his sobriety and newness in the group Ray found a spot on the grass, apart. Even so Martha thought he looked happy enough.

She grabbed a half bottle of wine from the Porter’s hand, filled a glass and sank a grass. AA’ll understand. Then she went over and sat beside him.

‘You are very good,’ she tells him.’

‘I put it down to my first director, Lynn.  Never be late and always know your lines and every else’s. Got me where I am today.’

‘A garden in Stoney with a lot of pissed folk.’

‘Being where you are is probably the best place to.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Told me. I just made it up, but it almost sounds true.’

Martha laughed.

‘Anna’s got a room made up for you.’

‘Great. I’m so tired. Maybe get the bus the next time.’

He followed after Anna who was jabbering at the air ahead of her, she was telling Ray something about the boiler, but he wasn’t listening. He listens to harpists on the wind, the singing in the grass  the same song Martha sang accompanied by the chords of the blue unblemished blue of the sky in in her eyes Martha’s  bursting heart that told of true loves and the only ones. Singing he had always her and she his, singing of all those unbelievable and improbable things like that, and of love at first sight.

 

The 3^rd Way: joy, love. Freedom

by Adam Parry

 

After so much silence joy spoke

I lifted up my feet into a helter-skelter of

dance, frantic, ecstatic

opening my eyes wide

to the love in their sighs, dancing

slow, around, inching laughter-lines

up

from their lips

knowing for a moment

that their heart beats as fast as mine

and so slow as the song

always calling us to awaken

from the half-light

and dance beneath

lamp-post in the street

as children do

as we never expected to do.