CAUSE OF DEATH

Thing with dead mothers, you never know when they'll come back and haunt you.
You bury them, and you think, that's it, you'll be doing your own laundry. 

Acute renal failure, they said, kidneys up the creek. Well I'm not so sure about it. My 

brother has an idea she gave up, left it to Jesus, what with the Old Man at it with that 

Latin woman, and both of us knocking up our girlfriends one after the other. And the 

laundry, sure. I don't know though, you don't spend all that time swelling up in pain, 

suffering, to get out of a little washing, not even if you're a Catholic. Catholic as fuck, 

the sisters; mum, the youngest, first one off to heaven. 

Aunty Lillian, The Ward Sister, had rung to say we should come. Middle Aunty Celia

meets us, she's in floods. They held mum's hands, her eyes fluttered and she was gone.

Big Aunty put a blue arm around Middle Aunty's shoulders. Me and him leave them 

grieving.

I think she just died, like people do. Unlucky, so young. At least she never knew
about us, the sex and drugs and all that, the divorces. Well, not the divorces anyway, or
Himself, at it again, and again, but no, I think she died of love, of a broken heart. My 

daughter Sophie, The Teacher, arrived. Same eyes. Same hair. Same name.

HERE THERE BE HUMANS


The last explosions
travelled along their own lightwaves
to a trillion possible futures.
Embers have cooled and a pall of dust
rising from the dark world 
Is split apart by new mountains.
Trickling breezes gather
swirling into potential storms.
The signal from the first bomb disintegrates
as it strikes the giant star
thousand mile long flames reaching out
each tip pulsing gold.

On the reawakening world rain forms lakes.
At the edges crawling slime.
More light penetrates the clouds.
The signals one after another
reach the distant star.
Millennia disappear into space. 

When the world has grown into lush green
with long grasses and swaying trees
the poles are disguised again by plastic ice.
Circling storms break the silence.
The first eggs begin to fall
cracking in flaming streams
slowing in the atmosphere
tiny wings breaking free
scales reflecting the green earth
eyes the colours of starbursts.
The new world slowly turns
and the skies are filled with dragons.

PEACHES AND CREAM

My first fuck wasn't Geraldine Welby, no, and if I met her now I wouldn't if she asked. Godbotherer. Still, she gave me a few pointers. Not that I knew what to do with a pointer once I had one. Our first close encounter wasn't really what you'd call an actual fuck, in the conventional sense, more a kind of sudden awareness that took me unawares, if you follow. Sticky business.

In the long vacation from school I would fly out B.O.A.C to wherever my parents were based at the time and spend the whole summer playing with the servants, swimming in the warm sea, going to functions and stuff, like you do, or I'd go fishing off the end of one of the jetties and catch nothing but bloaters, bloaters and more bloaters. Annoying; everyone else caught everything else in the sea and I caught bloaters. When I took a skiff out, oh yes, then I caught pomfret and parrot fish and nearly a shark once. Well, the shark nearly caught me but I didn't know. Somebody shouted to me as I beached the boat and I looked back to see the fin flashing as it turned away, slicing through the water, not very fast, straight out of the inlet. I nearly had my first fainting fit but instead that evening I had my first fuck on the verandah of the P.A. Chairman's Residence. 

There were three boys out from school and we tended to stick together, playing cricket for the Commerce Club 2nd XI usually against teams from the Forces or a P&O side made up of spindly clerks with no idea what good coaching can do for boys with a cruel disregard for age or size. The P.A. Chairman's do was for families and there were girls there, Geraldine Welby for one, and she cornered me as usual. I think she took it in turns but it seemed that she was always nearly touching me, her skin kind of feinted by me and she smelled of Johnson's Baby Powder, and I suppose I did too which may have had a lot to do with it all. I think of it as the shark attack evening now. 

Parties were very organised affairs with acts, sailors in costumes usually, but that's another story and half way through the evening I felt quite ill. Scoffing too much of The English Cold Store peaches and cream probably but whatever it was, I was taking a stroll round the verandah to get some air and at the back of the house I met a girl completely different to Geraldine Welby, to anyone or anything ever. She held a glass and she raised it, tipped back her head and for a moment just stayed like that, then she ran her tongue over her lips and as she looked down again she saw me. She filled the glass from a clear bottle of Gordon's Gin, took a sip, put it down and looked at me. She reached under her dress and something ripped. The sounds from the party on the lawn drifted faintly as she slowly raised her dress and fixed it in a black patent belt. Her naked legs were not like the naked legs I'd seen at the pool. 

She carefully undid my grey flannels, button by button, pulled us both down to the boarded floor. I began to tremble and she helped me. She dug her nails into my buttocks and held on to me. The pain made me wince but I wouldn't have stopped for anything. I did, though, pretty soon, I couldn't quite keep up the momentum. No amount of coaching would have made a difference then, no. She rearranged her dress and sipped her gin. I stood up and turned away; only my mum and matron had seen me naked from the front like that. Well, not quite like that. 

"Good boy.", she whispered as I limped away. I heard the rasp of a match and smelled cigarette smoke. 

ARRIVAL

The southwest wind came at high tide
Bringing smokey rain,
And wave upon wave breaking
Over rocky shore,
Twisting the sand, creamy
With bursting bubbles.
Hanging air was warm to touch.
Morning was at noon,
Day and sunset dissolved
Into evening's grey.
The sky sparked, birds,
Quick and low, flew homeward.
Insects mostly hid.
Snakes in the grass sipped
Electric air, laced
With the smells of fear.
Pariah dogs observed
From every sheltered corner,
And small boys
Running in the rain,
Their silver skins
Like fishes flashing,
Catching monsoon's moon.

KISSING COUSINS


Is it yourself? Says Murphy. How are yer?

It turns out the first coachload is early this year. A convention of nuns, a side
of beefy hurlers, a pair of peculiar fun lovers, thirteen born again ugly arseholes
and a long thin sciolist looking to sharpen up his act.

You visited the spot? Says I. It's been a long time.

Sure, me and Malone first at the wall, the others in a line, taking aim.

I'm reminded. Murphy, the Misses Hoolighan ... ?

Ah, the brave colleens, well, me and Malone, we trowed one innem each, before
and after, took turns on the road back, let them off by the gate at Raheenagh 
Church. Father Twomey heard their confessions, they said, tree Hail Marys. We
dropped the guns in the Deen, you know the score

Yeah, you know the score. Up the Republic and bless the dollar. My regards,
says I, to Malone.

DEAR READERS


My story is a sad one. I flew off a cliff a few years ago. Yes,
I am that Ignatious Malone. On a summer day full of promise
and brilliant lighting conditions, I was lying on my stomach on
a slab of rock on a cliff edge in the West Country, photographing
a shipwreck. Suddenly, a shimmering whiteness came gliding
into view and there was this ethereal being hanging above me
dangling its legs. 'Oh my god!' I said. There was a crack of doom,
and I thought I heard a deep voice say, 'On the button, Sunshine,
your time has come.'

The crack was the slab splitting - doom enough, no?
I began to fall. I fell a long, long way, broke my fall, and
a leg, when I hit a ledge, then I fell some more, caught
my left arm in bushes, tore my shoulder out, spun round
and slammed into the cliff face with mine, felt my jaw
dislocate, mouth bloody, which stopped me screaming so
when I finally reached the bottom, one more broken
limb didn't seem to matter that much, especially with my fingers
bent back the way they were, snapped across, though
not all of them which was lucky because the camera strap
around my neck was choking me dead. I was just able to free
myself when I passed out from the pain, but not before the
ethereal being reappeared, floating just above me, 'Told you so,'
it said, and the next thing was that I felt myself flying through
the air, on my back, breathing through a mask. Two days later
I woke up in hospital, mummified, breathing through a hole.

It was early in the morning, so when I screamed it took a minute
before a blue nurse stopped by and stabbed me. I had three
unbroken ribs apparently, one good arm, and my internal organs
would improve with time, she said, once they relocated, of course, 

and I'd be surprised how attractive a broken nose could be,
on my face.

I saw a sweet little old nun coming  down the ward and she caught
my eye, gave a holy wave and came toward me, and I thought, 'Sister,
have I got news for you.'

PROOF


I bought a font at the sale, all but complete. Roman type, nothing
fancy. A couple of galleys and some artwork, probably the last job in
hand before old Perkins died. I bid for a set of illustrated calendars,
but it went too high for me. The family, I think, and I was glad I
didn't get it.

'Never mind,' Mary said.

We had lunch. She was twenty, no something, and very bright. She
always said I discovered her. Sure, I gave her name to an art director I
knew and he took her on for a few months. Then she stayed, with him. She
wrote well. It isn't art, it's lying on demand. She understood that and
she had some crazy ideas. She would phone and spin me the tale, tape it.
Sometimes we'd spend a few hours together, like today. 

I took her to the sale, show her where she came from. Ink and hot metal. 

I had bought a framed foolscap page of printers correction symbols for her. 

'Look at this,' she said, 'transpose sections'. She thought the mark was like
half a battlement, and I suppose it is. 'Insert double quotation marks' is

like somebody sleeping. She got a little drunk and leaned on me in the car. 

I drove her to her flat and she leaned on me in the lift. I made coffee but when 

I took it into the sitting room she was asleep, her feet under a throw. I covered 

her and left. Insert full stop.