A darkness

This is totally unplanned. It just unfolds.

We have to cut back on some things, but we don't know what. She lies in bed, on her front. I lean in the door frame. We just can't agree.
"We don't get out together anymore."
"We can't pay these bills. Loans. Credit cards. Phone, electricity, gas."
"But we need to have a life!"

All that kind of stuff. We need to be able to laugh at this. Shit. There is darkness flooding this house. Pushing the light switch sets off no more than a ping. The sound tells you more about the light like that. Your ears tell you what your eyes need to know. Like when your belly tells you what your arse is about to go through. How can anyone go on like this! Flicking the switch. On. Off. On, off. On/off. No light, not even a ping anymore. Nothing to be done.
"Just change the bulb... ... Not now! In the morning..."

"...as simple as plugging out your electrical appliances at night. TVs, DVD players, mobile phone chargers... laptop power adapters are divils for using excess power, even when the thing is turned off! We can't continue on this energy splurge any longer, either economically or ecologically..." We should change the alarm from radio to beeps. At least the beeps - violent as they are to dreaming minds - remain meaningful, no matter how often they are repeated. Get up. Get up. Get up. News, on the other hand (and music for that matter) turns human misery into cliché.

We can cut back. We can get through. But where do we go from there? She tells me I think too much, as toothpaste escapes my mouth with my thoughts. Dressed, she gets her things together. I am catching up. Pants, but no shirt. I need coffee though. Something else to cut back on.

At work, they're cutting back. No more printing without permission. Or photocopies. There goes the end of all those loan applications. No more free coffee. Motivational meetings to be held on Facebook, or emailed to the team. Still, there's more than one way to waste money during the day. We email each other. It starts off "I'm not giving out, but you should think about..." A few of these, and it turns into:
"Wine, €25 per week --> €1500 a year! NOT including Christmas!"
"Smokes: how much?"
"You don't need designer anything!"
"You don't read all those books!"

All that kind of stuff. We need to be able to laugh at this. Shit. We arrive home at the same time, by accident, hoping to miss each other. Bags in our hands. Our minds compiling the accusations and arguments, ready for another round of who overspends and what is a want and what is a need; a train of thought; runs right through it; drives it all off the tracks. We look at each other. Really look at each other. We smile. The bulb unchanged. There is darkness in this house, but at least we can make light of it.

A Walk

The grass wet under bare feet. Squelching mud water squeezed between toes getting dirtier. How Do You Do? Nobody asks anymore; it;s all howya and hows it going and how are you. How you do whatever you do is your own business; it's not done, or something to do, to ask How Do You Do?
But there is no one here. There is no road, which will do quite nicely. Gentle blades of grass brushing the base of feet, wet from the grass and muddy water that does the toes in for cleanliness. No road and no one. First one leg, then a loss of balance recaptured by the next leg, stepping out to maintain upward integrity.
Everywhere, someone is laughing or listening. Or crying. Someone, everywhere is worried. Someone, everywhere is ignoring the signs; the information flowing like rivers raging against each other. They add their voices, but their voices are as the beasts of the field; whinnies and neighs and moos. Somewhere, everyone is articulate; their voices rise like tides or waves, to drown or crush with the pure force of gathered momentum.
Here, elsewhere the water rises slowly, through tickled toes. Here, where there is no road.

The Dances: 1

He tells her: I’m eight years old and that’s big enough to look after myself. She smiles and says, but could you look after the dinner? He protests he’s not allowed to use the oven. She knows, because she made the rule. With a short laugh and a rub of his head, mum runs out to the shop. Finally free, he walks into the Good Room where the Good Stereo System is.

He finds the right CD, and turns the volume up. He has to be in position. He gets up on the arm of the sofa, hits play on the remote control and jumps

landing and tumbling behind the sofa with the crash of the music starting. With the music going and the volume up, he throws himself around the room. The last time, when they saw him, they said it was like he was posessed, in the throes or something. She told him to stop. She said don’t do that again, you could hurt yourself, or break something. Later on, when they were having drinks and he should have been in bed, he heard them laughing about it. Well, not her, not mum. As the others laughed, she said there was somehting about it, about his movements, about his eyes, something she didn’t like. The rest laughed some more, and he hid in the bathroom under the stairs when dad came out to freshen up the drinks.

He moves round the whole room in fits and starts, the room where children should be seen and not heard, and should sit still on the sofa and listen so that the adults could bore him as much as they bored each other. They were strange, adults. They seemed restrained in some way that kids weren’t. He guessed this was why they put so many restraints on kids. They were jealous. They worried about money, they complained to each other, sometimes they even called other grown ups assholes and fucking this and fucking that. He knew when this happened he’d be sent to bed, no matter what the time was. They told him not to use the same words they used so freely, and then he was told not to dance when sometimes they danced so much they fell over laughing and knocking red wine to the floor. Once, a friend of his mum’s even danced on the table, asking whether anyone else remembered the time she danced like that in the college bar. She cried later, with his mum cuddling her. Seeing that, he wanted a cuddle, but he was hiding again, meant to be in bed for hours. He thought of going in and saying he had a bad dream, to get the cuddle. He thought better of it and went to bed.

None of this crosses his mind as the music erupts from inside of him. He moves in a series of spasms and jerks. It’s not about rhythm, it’s about sounds. His elbow doubles and straightens with violence as a guitar jangles; fists fly and fall with banging drums, but not crashing cymbals. For the cymbals he falls to the ground completely, figuring out how to get back up for the next bit. He changes between moving by the lyrics or by the music. There’s no plan. It’s about him and the music. Being each other.

Cast under the spell of the music, nothing so domestic as a front door could disturb him. And it doesn’t. Even if he could hear it, he’s definitely not allowed to open it. As it goes, he doesn’t hear it at all. He’ll hear about it later.

He runs around the table, half considering getting up on it. As he considers, he gets on his hunches, tongue out, arms outstretched, hands waving. Dad sometimes laughs at that, his Haka he calls it. He tried it once in school and another boy, Justin, hit him. Then he said he was a freak. He called Justin an asshole. That afternoon he had to account for all this to his mother, his teacher, and, what’s worse, Justin’s mother. Such injustice. Forcing kids to repeat what was said, even though everyone knows it will make them angrier.

He got up on the table. He lifted one leg then the other, kicking up the air, kicking that boy, the asshole, Justin, right in his asshole. He laughs wildly, then swings his arm in a huge arc. Looking down in front of him is the rug, but in front of his mind is Justin. “Fuck you!” he says, louder than the music. “Fuck you! Fuck you asshole!” he screams. His face feels hot, and he steps off the table, curls into a corner of the sofa. Tears are hot on his hands. He has to stop: mum would be worried about him. And besides, he isn’t even allowed have a drink when he’s on this sofa, let alone pour out all this salty water.

He stays like that for some time, tasting his tears from his cheeks, from his hands. He didn’t want to dance just because his mother was out. He wanted to make sure she wouldn’t see him again. She got so upset. He’d hate to feel like this again, not having a cuddle. He sucks air in a big sniff through his nose, just as the song cuts out. He laughs at it, like a fart or something when no one is talking. Another beat, another crash of sounds and noises. Another song!

He likes this one. He is calmer now, but the music is still loud. He is in his own place now, not at home, with the neighbour banging on the door and his mother coming round the corner of the estate. He is where the music is. He gets up, wiping his eyes, determined to stop crying.

He has to build it up. He starts with his hands, rising and falling with the beat because he can’t yet click his fingers the way older kids and adults do. His arms go next, stretching out and in to the left and the right; first one, then the other then both, and he spins himself around. Looking down, he thinks maybe he’s like Jesus, then takes it back in case God or Granny or Grandad or someone was listening. He turns faster and faster, the whole world stopping around him. He likes the idea, so he starts to laugh again, the tears nearly dry in his hot eyes and stinging cheeks. He has forgotten how it started, and he knows there is no end.

Difficulties with Writer's Block

A plot! A plot! My story needs a plot!
There are words and ideas teeming.

The soul, scathed is reeling.
The searching is done and the story is won, but not plot! No plot! No plot!
The mind and the hands composing
- First one, then the other -

Who could bear with such a thing?
Ideas tease out words that tumble from brain to screen,
From the mind to the eye, with no "Where?" or "Why?"
No reason to continue.

But
Read on! Read on!

Poem

The sun is climbing down there
One last, blinding cry, the light's goodbye,
Dazzling the eye from the corner of
A powdered covered sky.

A light blue turns pink, an orangey red,
Tucked under clouds hanging over my head.

I cannot sleep in such daynight.
Thinking and turning
The mind is churning
Close the eyes, but not the mind.

To transend or transgress everything
It is. This sky.

Baby blues and pinks, soft colors
Translucent, transparent, transgressing, transcending,
Everything is moving, from here to then
- never the right time, nor the place -
Tucked under a sky
Turning soon to night that will
Break through to day.