B1nary - Flash Fiction

1’m standing with the streetlamp sp0tl1ght1ng my n1ghtly catwalk str1ptease.

Bar1ng plenty t0 h00k the j0hns, c0vered up just en0ugh t0 thr0w 0ff the c0ps.

Th0ugh they kn0w us, s1nce un1quely they are fam1l1ar with our faces.

F0r the rest, n0 k1ss1ng, n0 r1mm1ng. M0uth and backd00r rema1n 0ff l1m1ts. 

Access granted s0lely t0 the pr1me 0ne 0f my zer0es. 

0nly 1n return m1nd f0r s0me 0f th0se pr1nted 0n p0und n0tes. Preferably the 0ne with the f1gure f1ve bef0re the zer0.

Step r1ght up, d0n’t be c0c0nut shy, cum 1nt0 my 0r1f1ce.

0ur mutual l0ve c0ntract, y0ur pen1s, my h0le, ten0n and m0rt1se.

Th0ugh y0ur number 0ne is t0 be encl0sed 1n a c0nd0m at all t1me.

D0uble the length, d0uble the pleasure my guarantee, 0n my h0n0ur.

And y0urs the 1 pr0m1se t0 pay sanct10ned by Her Majesty the Queen’s f1zz0g 0n th0se there bankn0tes, c01n 0f the realm. 1llegal but tender.

Her Maj the l0ne key that turns the l0ck of my chast1ty belt, p0rtal to my vaj.

Payment up fr0nt 0r 1 dr0p d0wn the p0rtcull1s 0n y0ur ard0ur. Deflated l1b1d0 rap1d0. 

0h yeah? Well 1 kn0w a1k1do. Yeah that’s right, beg0ne with y0u. Ta1l between y0ur legs. And when 1 say ta1l, 1 mean of course… 

D0esn’t help bus1ness any. N0 matter h0w many n0ughts there are.

W1th0ut a 0ne bef0re them 1 bear abs0lutely n0 value. 

The Island Of Stability - Flash Fiction

As dead as the dinosaurs. Though not of course coeval with them. In laboratories chemists create super-heavy elements which exist for mere milliseconds before transforming back into more stabile arrangement of protons, neutrons and electrons. Such elements, if they ever existed in Nature, have such rapid decay rates that they have long ago become iron, lead, radon and the like. Their half lives played out into immutability. Why do the scientists bother when these elements have such a short lifespan, they offer no practical use at all? Because they quest after an ‘island of stability’ at some point on this spectrum, where elements exist with increasing half-lives that mean they have a much more stable existence, only no one has figured out how to create them, nor found them existing naturally. 

Such decay would have taken place by the time man appeared on the earth, but hey who’s present to say what time is at this pre-temporal stage? We use carbon dating and other radioactive decay metrics to back-define chronology, so this cavil still holds in real time. Not that there is such a thing of course. Experienced time is not stable. Only in mathematical terms is it regularly sequenced and segmented.

Ug had mined some lead by cracking open a rock. Unsurprisingly he was unaware that it was a radioactive isotope of lead (210), as he used it for a pillow to cradle his head at night. His body absorbed its decay and would have sparked off carcinogenic mutations within his body, only the era’s low natural life expectancy meant he would not outlive the lead’s twenty two year half-life that would have ravaged him unto death.

Ug pointed to the animal skins on his feet with the very spear that had smote the beast. Unk just assumed he was boasting and flouting his fortune from the recent hunt. Ug danced from one foot to the other, waggling the raised one in Unk’s direction. Unk’s blood was rising at the perceived continued sleight. Ug emitted some sounds, but Unk just shrugged his shoulders, or scratched his head, or held his hands out wide while crinkling the lower features of his face, the precise gestures not having been set in mutual comprehension as such. Ug threw himself at Unk’s feet, then struggled to lift one of them off the ground, sending Unk into a frenzy of hopping trying to keep his balance. Ug pointed at the scars and scabs and blisters on his confrere's foot, then pointed to the skins wrapped around his own and emitted some more sounds to convey the comparative weals of skin. Look Unk, we went through all this yesterday, remember, the petroglyphs? Unk smashed him over the head with his club as his final indecipherable and yet inviolable thought on the matter. 

Wait, hold on a minute Sonny Jim, I can smell it on you. Spliff. Skunk. Yes you do. Marijuana. Sinsimilla, Mary Jane. Grass. Cannabis. Bud. Weed. Collieweed. Reefer. Chronic. Blunt. Draw. Ganja. Herb. Whacky tobaccy. Oh this is hopeless. Let me open my Urban Dictionary translation app… What? Give me a moment here. Is that ‘dope’ as in isotope 13 or 15? Come on, throw me a bone here please. Open your mouth wide and enunciate clearly. As if any imaginary doobie between your lips would fall out… Do you mean ‘bad’ in the sense of isotopes 6, 8 or 10…? Damn youth and their rapidly mutating argot. Or is it ‘ergot’? Either way I’m getting a migraine… Not least think about how much money you waste on that stuff. No not waste, ‘spunk’. What? Money, you know, money? Oh sorry, English as a second language. Bank (isotope 72). Swag. Scratch (isotope 52). Dosh. Readies. Moolah. Lucre. Lolly. Loot. Booty (isotope 107). P’s. Spondoolicks. Skrill. Ah we have lift off! Docking with the mothership. Docking your pocket money might be an idea… Hold it, I’m an ‘askhole’? What the hell is ‘askhole’ when it’s at home...? Oh here we are. Hmmmm. You’re lucky I heard that right first time mistah, see you can enunciate when you choose to… I may be your mum, but even I can see that’s a fauxpology. See not quite as beyond redemption as you might think… How do you spell that…? No, nothing, guess Urban Dic hasn’t even caught up to that one yet goddamnit… Would you care to enlighten me as to its meaning…? Pretty please…? Oh, so it’s just the silent treatment now is it? Words fail me….

A Maggot - Flash Fiction

“I pluck the last apple from the fruit bowl. I wash the apple then have it sit, presenting spherical in the palm of my hand. The water globules shimmy shimmeringly as I turn the apple by its stunted stalk in the course of my inspection. They seem to draw up the apple’s red hue within their vesicular protuberance. An osmotic trompe-l’oeil. The skin appears pristine. I move into the study and am struck by a thought, what if a water droplet is precisely aligned over the wormhole caused by a boring larvae, so as to diffuse beyond my sight? I shake the apple vigorously and watch the spray of moisture fly off like a swarm fledging. There remain fewer, but more tenacious drops, elongated by their smearing perturbation on the surface of the apple. I briefly think of Newton. The stem bowl, already a recessed tunnel of sorts, is particularly hard to descry, being of similar hue to larval frass. However this whole morsel does indeed seem untouched and virginal. Apart from the chemicals waxing it verglas of course. Confident that there would be no codling moth larval Amundsen defeating my caterpillary Scott in the race to the core, I sink my teeth into the red peel. A mist of the apple’s own juices flies out into the air. Too fine to echo the beads of water purged by the action of my earlier convulsion, also they leave no darkening umbrage on the carpet. As I chew the pulpy mixture of soft rind and crisper pome, I inspect the lacerations in skin collapsed like a mine shaft and see the borders picked out by the indentations of my teeth. Ordered like a file of marching insects. Why are my mind’s associations with this fruit always insectival? Liquid beads on red skin could so easily conjure up the flesh of a mate emerging from the shower, or a swimming pool. I blame my mother. Or Eve. Or the serpent. I take another bite which has a more percussive sonance, presumably because there is no muting by the softer outer casing. My teeth impressions have vanished, as has the red skin to reveal the white seam beneath. I revolve the apple to its south face in order to offer me its unscaled scarp, but in doing so I must have pincered it too hard and the pads of my fingers are sunk into the tender flesh. I pick at the puckered rind with the point of my fingernail until I have abraded it away. Sure enough the cells beneath have bruised under the imprint of my digital pressure. I marvel at the celerity of the discolouration, even as I am disgusted by my clumsy adulteration of the fruit. I reduce the span of my bite to nibble the flesh either side of the blemish, as the appetising pleasure falls away, reducing to just the chore of consuming it. I'm beginning to think I would have been better off with a glass of draught cider. By its end, the habitual aesthetic satisfaction of scrimshawing to the hourglass core, remains still denatured by the canker of the bruised protrusion. Like a chrysalis awaiting to hatch the apple’s seeds buried beneath. I throw the core into the recycling bin. No, that’s the wrong appellation. Into the organic waste receptacle”. 

I woke the next morning and readied to edit the manuscript. I picked up a red biro and steeled myself that this draught would involve no proofing, but solely focus on a purge of the metaphorical element. For I had tossed and turned half the night, concerned that the piece contained too much symbolism, rendering it far removed from the actual experience I was trying to harvest. Having said all that, the very first amendment I made, was to add a comma within the second sentence. Sure enough in no time at all the paper was soon spotted with red warts. But these were all superficial syntactical markers. I was irritated with my own ill-discipline. I had plumped for the surface soft rind rather than the crisper pome beneath. I plucked the sheet of paper and wafted it in the air away from me, by way of symbolic gesture to have the spray of red corrigenda fly off like a swarm fledging. That in my imagination the paper would return to its untouched and virginal state, prior to this premature waxed verglas edit. My head now cleared, I reapplied it towards fresh inspection of the text. However it was as if my little ritualistic conceit had taken actual form, for I seemed to have been left with a mote in my eye. The characters on the page, both the red and black, started to diffuse. They shimmered shimmeringly. Momentarily confused, I shut my eyes trying to clear their wateriness in order to return the apple of my eye that was my own writing, to its pristine, stable state. But the caterpillary convulsion continued. The ink, surely dried from yesterday’s initial application, was beginning to run. The letters elongated by their smearing perturbation on the surface of the paper. Re-ordered like a file of marching insects, peeling themselves right off the folio. A few, more tenacious letters clung on in place, while their neighbours bored tunnels of their escape. I imagined that I could almost perceive a mist of deliquesced letters flying out into the air. The few remaining letters looked stunted, pit props vainly trying to brace a collapsed mine shaft. Lacerations amid the text wherever you looked. The red and black inks now blended and merged into an unsightly discolouration. An ever-darkening umbrage, my script had the appearance of nothing less than insect frass. My ideas were evanescing in front of my very eyes. The paper regressed back to its pulp. Even the pen’s indentations formerly filled and occupied by ink, were smoothing out their puckered selves and returning to first flush of a pristine white seam. An unscaled scarp. How do I know this? Because I rushed to seize a pencil from my writing bureau and began to shade across the grain hoping to reveal the vanished letters. But to no avail. I pincered the paper hard between the pads of my fingers and shook it vigorously. This only ruptured the tender tissue, as if it really had become degraded through moisture undermining its integrity. This pulpy chrysalis had no seeds of creativity left to hatch. My text denatured by the canker of words. I balled the leaf up wrinkled spherical, sat presented in the palm of my hand where it proceeded to unfurl some of its serpent coils. Its insectival wings. I threw its empty core into the recycling bin. No, that’s the wrong appellation. Into the organic waste receptacle. 

Just Aphasia Going Through - Kinetic Typography Video

Thought I'd repost this, my first kinetic typography telling of a flash fiction story "Just Aphasia Going Through", as the second is about to land imminently and I can't wait to share that one with you.

Update, you can view the new one "How One Of Them Remembers The Conversation" here



For a some thoughts on the current relationship between literature and kinetic typography, my post here

   

Flesh Wound - Flash Fiction

Lonely heart

Cold shouldered

Chin up

Toe in water

Shoulder to wheel

Give eye teeth

Stick neck out

Caught eye

Thumbs up

Shot in arm

Mouth watering

See eye to eye

Mind blowing

Feel in bones

Shivers down spine

Joined at hip

Body and soul

Belly laughs

Head over heels

Fevered brow

Love muscle

Leg over

Bees knees

Legless

Wandering eye

Achilles heel

Back foot

Face the music

All ears

Lips sealed

Cat got tongue?

Two faced

Blood boiling

Clean breast

Flesh wound

Cut own throat

Skinned alive

Given elbow

Gutted

Shoulder to cry on?

Lonely heart

Slit wrists

Accentuate The Positive - Flash Fiction

He received a smack across his chops. A sonorous slap acutely stinging his kisser. Imprinting a scarlet macula upon his crimson labia. Her immaculate acrimony no longer shellacked behind a pacific patina of civility. An accumulated tumulus of bruisable wisecracks, now she had come back with an unacceptable contusion of her own. His lack of accolades for her literary accomplishments had snapped her self-accord. Acted as an accelerant to her lashing out. Ransacking her own pitch-black love sump, she offered him an ice-pack to which he circumspectly acceded. The hack’s grammatical prose may not have been accurate, but her uppercut was.

Unholy Trinities - Friday Flash

him, her

Nina Pinta Santa Maria

mirror signal manoeuvre

jacket waistcoat trousers

chest waist hips

guitar bass drums

thesis antithesis synthesis

fish chips gravy

fish chips mushy-peas

tick tack toe

inch foot yard

rock paper scissors

Clotho Lachesis Atropos

larva pupa imago

father mother child

frankincense gold myrrh

faith hope charity

DNA amino-acid protein

protein vitamin carbohydrate

cereal toast eggs

Doric Ionic Corinthian 

solid liquid gas

knife fork spoon

morning noon night

liberty equality fraternity 

malleus incus stapes

Satan, Beelzebub Moloch

tens hundreds thousands

thousands hundreds tens

Homo Erectus Home Habilis Home Sapiens

id ego superego

bacon lettuce tomato

Charlotte Emily Anne

Eastern Central Pacific

Rachkovsky Dzerzhinsky Beria 

husband wife mistress

Okhrana, NKVD, KGB

pounds shillings pence

robbery assault battery

birth marriage death

Abraham Isaac Jacob

arrest trial sentence

Monolith - Flash Fiction

I was quarried from the seed of my stonemason father
And domesticated at my mother's hearthstone
I was anchored by my foundation stone
Safely buttressed by my stone fortifications
Until my father was epitaphed on his headstone
The copestone of his workshop fell on him stone dead
I lost my bearings with this degaussing of my lodestone
My mother draped in constricting grief like a millstone around her neck
Whereupon I became precipitantly blunted scissors to stone
I was angularly gouged by my kidney stone
I was acidly etched by my gallstones
Sticks, stones and brickbats did break my bones
Though I remained stone-deaf to those concussing chiders
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, my windows were all put through anyway
In vain I tried to acuminate myself at the whetstone
Stonewashed drainpipe denim, dressed to kill
Only to be pip pipped by my peach stone
And de-pithed by my cherry stone
These stony-faced partners rejected me from ever becoming their clingstone
I scourged myself with a pumice stone
My own stonewalling body made it like drawing blood from a stone
I self-medicated the pain and became stoned immaculate with alchemical powders
But instead of sinking like a stone
Lift the stone and it's no longer woodlouse me that crawls out
I had been emboldened by my idiomatic stones
From somewhere I pulled out a modern day philosopher's stone
And stone the crows, my ship had come in
Petrified no more by my own stone cold failings
Now I was as polished as my gemstones
Apprised by others according to my precious stones
I positively scintillated from my gemstones
Treasured for my precious stones
I want Ray Winstone to play the part of me in the movie
But under no circumstance will it be directed by Oliver Stone
But the stony-hearted users in the guise of being a friend
Pebble dashing their blarney stone hard luck stories at me
The mephitic whiff of brimstone accompanying their devilish smiles
The road to hell is paved with stoney-eyed intention
My well of ever spouting ambrosia swiftly became sown with stone
Within a year I was back stony broke
But their demands never slackened, immuring me beneath my own foundation stone
My rolling stone stilled, moss gathered upon the inscription of my headstone

Blind Date Dialectic - Friday Flash

Needy or carefree?

Careerist or nester?

Earnest or wanton?

Antagonistic or placid?

Lacy or leather?

Realist or fantasist?

Manhater or hussy?  

Pussycat or scold? 

Golddigger or kindhearted?

Artful or unaffected?

Affectionate or ardent?

Mardy or relaxed?

Waxed or bearded?

Fearless or mousy?

Frivolous or prudent?

Prudish or uninhibited?

Unintelligent or forensic?

Neurotic or unsentimental?

Augmented or natural?

Turpitude or chaste?

Hassled or poised?

Poisonous or juicy?

Judgemental or tame?

Amazonian or pacifist?

Fisting or cunnilingus?

Gusher or shrivelled?

Vajazzled or trim?

Frigid or freak?

Speak or spurn?

Yours or mine?

Essence

                                CGGTACTGAAGTTCAGT                          GGTATATCGACGTATCGT

                                GCCTATATAAGCCTAGT                          AATAGTACGATACCAGAG

                                TTAGATAGTCACCATGA                          GCGATGCGTAGCATGACG

                                AGAGCTACTCAACCTGG                         TTGGCTCTACATGACAGG

Breaking Up - Friday Flash

“… connection… Frustrating…” 

“What?… hear me… …out?”

“Difficult… trying… very…”

“… not enough… and… bars”

“… signal… You… … lousy…”

“Can’t fight… You… there?”

“… forget… us… bother…”

“… give… chance… might”

“…my… back… Unforgivable”

“Time…”

“… later…”

“Actually… meaning…”

“… much too…”

“Static… both… …”

“Oath?”

“… said ‘growth’…”

“Let’s… clear…”

“This…”

“Pointless… … ring… back”

“… waste… …precious…”

“… breaking up…”

“Sorry…?”

“Dumped”

Breathless - Friday Flash

He removed the cigarette resting behind his ear and held it to the burning tip of the one still perched between his lips until the flame took whereupon he swapped them round and let the dog end pitch to the ground as he moved to stamp out the embers of its life but since his attention was given to ensuring the new smoke was securely in place his stomp missed the butt entirely which he became acquainted with as he looked down and proceeded to pound the feebly pluming fag end which, were his foot a hand and his shoe a knife, could be observed to be a stabbing frenzy which utterly reflected his mood and temper at that moment to his very fibre as his cells cried out to be nourished so that the butt stood for his meet who was late and was being severely punished for it under the tread of his shoe, but his fury was cut off since in his furore his breath was so abated behind lips clamped on the new gasper to prevent it falling out of his mouth, that the fumes backed up into his gullet and caused him to explode in a paroxysm of coughing which sent the cigarette shooting from his mouth like a dart from a blowpipe which doubly enraged him and saw him unwittingly jack-knife his body as his leg continued to try and obliterate every last trace of the first stub, while his outstretched arm strived to salvage his newer coffin nail so that the differing pulls toppled him over on to the pavement and knocked the wind out of him as he lay there on his stomach panting and wheezing his wordless rage even as the tears of frustration and desperate craving unleashed themselves from their ducts like a crack parachute division exiting their jump plane.

“You wanna give those up, they’ll kill you” said a man approaching him on the pavement. “Looks like you’re out of puff” as he tossed him a little bag of powder. "That'll put the wind back in your sails".

Human Viscosity - A Short Tale about Human Fluid Dynamics

(This is a densely written story about density. It's left open as to its interpretation, but some may find this study of human fluid dynamics a tad unsettling, so this is a content warning. Of sorts)

Oil slicked the inner thighs. A sleek insulation coating the skin. Dampening all subsidiary neural agitation amid its cloying diffusion.

The basted skin’s temperature began to rise. The glaze slowly began evaporating as it was warmed from beneath.

But the grease also served to adhere the tissue to the abrasive material of the bare mattress, as it gently tugged the hairs and skin into its coarse embrace. Such suctioning choked the swaddled suspension of sensation, returning the body to an awareness of its proneness.

The fumes of the unguent engulfed the olfactory system. The brain was firing frenziedly as the liquid slither leavened the weight of the body where it was in contact with the mattress, while the unrestricted flesh was surfeited beneath the clamp of the dense liquid.

The oil was continuing to cede the surface, as it either seeped in through the pores in the epidermis, or percolated the mattress where the leg abutted the fabric. Goosepimple promontories rose to signal the balefire of a tremulous chill invading the body in its wake.

With the unctuous cladding duly degraded, the body’s water table was on the rise once again. Stopped up previously, the pores hadn’t been able to respire, so their tributaries had turned tail and seethed inside. Stretching the integument tight under its tamped swell, the humectation buffeted and surged against the subcutaneous membrane, as if trying to dissolve its dam. Now finally the moisture could muster, cohering into beads of perspiration. Like paratroopers awaiting the green light, they blistered and twitched at the aperture of each of the numerous glands. Finally with the surface tension now as unbearable as the mental discomposure brewing up the effluvium, they absconded. Distended globules forging their cooling runnels down the glistening flesh. Some fell prey to the tangled follicle foliage and became fatally snared. Others were beached upon impermeable vestiges of the oil. But the surviving sapper drops achieved their mission and delivered localised alarum to the recoiling flesh. Each one was eventually picked off as it evaporated, leaving only a dirty salt sediment smearing the quaking skin like dried up stream beds.

The next pressure was far more parochially located. It had been present from the onset, but displaced by other deeper piercing insistencies. Now its prod was pushed to the fore once homeostasis had regulated and relegated oil and sweat from bodily sentience. For this was the most regulatory flow of them all, the one customarily controlling waste. Its constriction was plenty fierce, but when the spill came there was not the anticipated spate. A dribbled exudation of urine rather than a gush. The discharge was warm against the flesh which served to exaggerate its imagined volume, but the laggardly flow rescaled its attributes back to a trickle. The acid tang corroded the mind’s levees as to an appreciation of what this flux portended. It represented an elongated tributary of fear. Its source high up in the brain’s troughs and crevices, fermented by the realisation and concomitant reflexive reaction to terror. This liquid release sirened that there was unlikely to be any such release. 

The final emission was the most viscid of them all. 

Again a bubbling up, but a reluctance to cleave from the arterial wellspring for all the seething. This serum was too thick to squeeze through the fissures of pores, but rather required greater gouges for its proliferation.

Pulsing like magma, finally the haemal weep was reluctantly birthed through a cleft canal. A rupture in the embankment of the skin.

The beads formed were more conspicuous than the previous deliquescences. They had burnished the horripilated flesh as they slicked along, whereas the globules of blood eclipsed the very skin beneath its deliberate overlay.

Nevertheless its course was laboured, meandering over the contours of flesh made salient by muscle flex, pausing at any hairy scrub like a tourist stopping at every beauty spot to take in the vista. 

Eventually the first drops of this metallic Nile forged its path to the mattress and stained it red as it pooled and washed up hard against the flesh scarp of the legs.

Taken from flash collection "28 Far Cries" available from Amazon

Short Story - Narcissus Denied

In a world without silver and glass, those with poor eyesight were selected out. Victims of predators, but also condemned to die as lonely hearts. 

For without silvered mirrors, lovers constantly asked their swains to construe their own unseen beauty for them. To trace their features with their fingers and relay a description of what lay beneath their pads. Love making with a running commentary. These verbal echo chambers, pinging back the co-ordinates of the heart by plotting the topography of the rest of the body. Reaffirmation of flesh through the word as much as the adoration by sinew and plasma. The connection was less the physical merging, more the establishing of an image in the mind of each partner of themselves.

Suitors gave air to what attracted them to their inamorata and gave generously. All became poets and lyricists as they gave vent to the full range of their imaginations, reaching for increasingly outlandish metaphors as they moved their lover’s hands over their own countenance. True love often exaggerated, sometimes it outright lied and fabricated. 

Moving in to steal a partner from a rival was often a case of offering a different and maybe more flattering or appealing portrayal of the paramour’s pulchritude. Flimsy fixities of self-images crumbled as they were effortlessly overwritten. Duels were fought with incongruously soft-edged verbal bouquets. The vanquished reeling away to brush up his verbal palette elsewhere. 

Without mirrors and with the quality of water too muddied to hold a sharp reflection, men were unshaven. Their visages partly covered up from delineation in word. Their faces remained opaque. Not so very different from our own world in many ways.

"Space, Structure, Time" - Story without characters

A brick monolith. Trapezium in shape, stretching from the road all the way up to the railway track it supported on its vertex. A sheer slab of Victorian brickwork. An unremitting plane that defies the eye’s ability to encompass it all within a single frame.

With the Georgian buildings opposite, the planetary sun cannot penetrate the narrow corridor produced, though cars can navigate the road in single file adhering to the ‘Give Way’ sign. No shadows stamp the wall as markers of time, rather the light remains gloomy and constant throughout the day. At night the wall is as Jacob’s Ladder delivering the eye’s gaze right up into the firmament. A lensless telescope.

Further down its length, men have cut holes into the brick. Bored termite tunnels into its fired red earth heart. Hemispherical penumbra in which workshops and garages operate. Electric lightbulbs, rhythmic panel beating and tinny radio sounds emerge from within during the day. At night, metal shutters bring down a corrugated veil over man’s paltry attempts to reorganise the space of the brick wall. Every time a train passes over these hollowed out sections of the raised foundations, the pitch of its click-clack drone changes. As if emitting a hollow laugh, by way of comment on the cars beneath’s ill-fated attempts to supplant it as the primary means of transporting humans. 

The masonry is discoloured. But not from age. Nor from the elements which are also screened off by the solid fill of any slanting angle of ingress. Any brick dust that was to crumble away from the surface had done so during the Victorian age. The wall is now an unbroken plane ripe for inscription. For humans to make their own gnomons segmenting time upon a flat aspect.

However the precise divergence of the stains from the original hue is not fixed. It is not set in stone. For some of the time, the blemishing is directly that of the paint sprayed on to the brick by graffiti artists. Then at other times the chroma are obliterated as the wall is chemically hosed at high pressure. There is that interim span where the wall has a darkened saturated stain, until gradually the droplets evaporate, the brick dries out and the blot fades into a lighter shade. Yet one still at odds with the rest of the brick beyond the range of the spraycan atomisers and the improvised harnesses of the artists.

The bouts are not regular by any means. The artists do not return immediately to re-overlay the cleansed canvas with their pigment. Not does the council guarantee an instant response to each fresh appearance of the publicly produced mural. Both initiatives seem somewhat desultory. Hardly meriting the term of a campaign being waged by either party, yet both side hurl not inconsiderable logistics and ordonnance into the fray.

And what blaze do the artists seek to cast upon this inviting space? What artistic vision to shape and re-envision this monumental blankness? They only spoor their names. Or just their initials. The artist’s signature at the bottom of the canvas, above which remains unadorned.  The author’s colophon on the spine of a book whose pages inside remain unimprinted. And many of these names or initials are unreadable on first sight. The letters, the pigmented calligraphy, not corresponding to readily legible alphabetic characters such is the artistic flourish applied to them. Or the cacography depending on the observer’s artistic perspective. 

While the bricks remained constant through time, the letters seem to have decayed or mutated. Punctured by self-aggrandising stars and other glaring shrapnel. Characters blocked with a dimensionality, they just do not possess on the flat plane of the printed page. The inclination and declination of these majuscules resembling architectural structures themselves, such as viaducts and bridges just further up the railway track. Yet forever dwarfed by the unremitting expanse of untouched brickwork above.

The other unknowing echo the autographs had was that of the original bricklayers, who just under the rim of the apex, had signed their handiwork and dated it. It was semi-concealed by the weeds that grew in between the sleepers and distended down. But it was a curious self-asseveration by the construction engineers, since at such a height no one could ever bear witness to it. Their names now like the builders of ancient tombs, expired and interred within their very erections. The legends of the graffiti artists no more enduring as they are effaced beneath the chemical cocktail dashed against them. 

The wall outlives its fabricators and would certainly see out these modern day tomb raiders. Even if the trains were to stop running in the future, superannuated by technology or pensioned off by budget cuts, the embankment would prevail. A fixture in the cityscape which parcelled out parochial time and yet provoked little resonance beyond its immediate locality.

Quickie Divorce

Quickie Divorce

portmanteau	tote
combination	drawstrings
ingress	exhalation
plush	riband
foam	crepe
recesses	crinkle
moulded	atomiser
lubricant	billow
muzzle	luscious
assemblage	salve
smooth	stilettos
black	weal
steel	pumice
tapered	tallow
grooved	aromatherapy
symbiosis	cordial
indurate	ottoman
buttressed	recumbent
heft	bliss
ratchet	operatic
crosshairs	maestro
bloodless	ardour
torque	crescendo
declutch	conducting
reverberation	timpani
recoil	exultation
rupture	soaring
pithed	bodiless
perforated	suds
punctured	immersion
spatter	smirch
encore	encore
flawless	purged
dismantle	uncluttered
reconceal	divested
dematerialise	triumphant
quietus	release
contract	decree
nisi	absolute

Glossed In Translation - Friday Flash

The below is an experiment. I took the English paragraph I wrote, put it through Google translate in 6 different languages, copied and pasted the results back into Google translate and thence back into English. The original text inevitably undergoes some mutations in this process. Partly through the vagaries of Google translate itself, as presumably it's a translation programme that works by algorithm and word recognition, so that it will miss nuance and multi-shaded meaning words. While grammar always chops up and reconstitutes word orders. But the piece is also dealing with the metaphorical differences between diverse languages and cultures. Again nuances can wildly diverge between two differing languages. The text I wrote was about an unspecified liberation/terrorist organisation's demands around a captured hostage, denouncing an unspecified occupying/interventionist army in its land. The differences between the texts once put through the translator, hopefully represents a sort of "lost in translation", whether mechanical in source, or metaphorical. Two sides in conflict can rarely understand one another's language because of their wildly differing perspectives. 

Of course, Google Translate's claim to cover the world's language needs instantaneously is also a form of colonialism - as said, it gets things badly wrong in its translations, but also there are many language it overlooks and effectively marginalises by not offering them as part of its functionality. As a side note, MS Word did not allow me to reproduce the Khmer and Tamil scripts for their own language. Blogger wouldn't let me cut and paste the Khmer. Again that arbitrary cut off in action.

 

                                         

Communiqué: We parade this man before the eyes of the world. Your cowardly unmanned drones and bombs from 5 miles up may chop off one of our heads, but two more instantly spring up from the bloodied stump to replace it. You cannot defeat us. You call us a pit of vipers, but you do not possess the anti-venom to counteract us. Yet when we in turn come to behead this man, your populace lose their will to prosecute the fight. Their morale is sapped. Do not complain, what is the so called collateral damage of one man, compared to the computer guided many deaths and maimings you wreak on our innocents? You colonialists reap what you sow. No new head will sprout from his neck. No new head will grow from your decapitated empire. But this is our soil and we thrive and bloom in it, where you wither and perish. Consider the execution of this man as reparations. The truth and reconciliation committee, without the reconciliation. The first downpayment in blood on what we are owed for the rape of our land and people.

Српско-хрватски Communication: We parade the man before the world. Your cowardly unmanned drones and bombs than 5 miles can be cut off one of our heads, and the two immediately spring up from the bloody stump to replace it. They can not win. You call us the pit vipers, but do not have the anti-venom, that we oppose. However, when we came back to cut this man, your people lose their will to prosecute the fight. Their morale is sapped. Do not complain, what is called collateral damage of a man in relation to a computer guided many deaths and maimings are out on our innocent? You colonizers reap what you sow. No new head will emerge from the door. No new head will grow out of the kingdom beheaded. But this is our country and we thrive and flourish in it, which wither and disappear. Consider the execution of this man as odštetu.Komisija Truth and Reconciliation Commission, without pomirenja.Prvi participation in the blood of what is owed to rape our country and people.

中国的 Bulletin: We march in front of this man in the eyes of the world. Maybe you cowardly drones and bombs from five miles cut off our heads one but two sea instant pop from bloodied stump instead. You can not defeat us. You call us a pit of vipers, but you do not have anti-venom offset us. However, when we turn to behead this man, your people have lost their will to prosecute the fight. They have been weakened. Do not complain, what is called collateral damage a person, compared to a computer-guided deaths and maimings you vent on our innocent? Colonialists your choosing. No new head from his neck will germinate. No new growth from the decapitated head of the empire. However, this is our land, we grow, bloom where you wither and perish. Consider implementing this man, as compensation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there is no reconciliation. The first initial blood we owe our land and people raped.

العربية Statement: We procession this man in front of the eyes of the world. You have the cowardly drones and bombs from 5 miles to seal may once out of our heads, but two more immediately spring up from the stump of blood to replace him. You can not defeat us. You can contact us pit vipers, but you do not have anti-venom to face us. Even now, when we in turn come to decapitate this man, the masses lose your free will to prosecute the battle. And sapped morale. Do not complain, what is the so-called collateral damage of one man, compared with the computer directed many of the deaths and maiming that wreak on our innocent? I colonists reap what you sow. A new President will not sprout from his neck. A new President will not grow from the Empire decapitated your. But this is our land and we thrive and bloom in it, where you wither and die. Consider the implementation of this man is compensation. To the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, without reconciliation. Advance payment for the first time in the blood on what we owed ​​to rape our land and our people.

தமிழ் Report: The man in front of the eyes of the world, we march. Your cowardly fired from unmanned drones and up to 5 miles with our heads cut off, but instead immediately bloodied by two more in the direction from the spring. You can not defeat us. A pit vipers us to call you, but you do not want to poison us against the opposition. We will behead them when this man, you struggle to prosecute people lose their wishes. Their morale sapped. No complaint, you ruin the computer guidance on what our innocent compared to many deaths and maimings, a man is called collateral damage? What you sow you reap colonialists. The new leadership will sprout from his neck. Empire with your arm grows from the new leadership. But it is our soil, and we will thrive and bloom, where you wither, die. Consider reparations to fulfill this man. Without compromising the truth and reconciliation commission. What do we pay our land mass rape in the blood first downpayment.

Khmer Communiqué: We parade this man before the eyes of the world. Dachahangkear cowardly unmanned and bombs from 5 miles to chop off our heads, but two more immediately spring up from the stump bloodied to replace it. You can not get rid of us. You call us the pit of vipers, but you do not have administrator anti-venom to counteract. Yet when we turn to behead a man of the people lost their will to prosecute the fight. Their morality is sapped., Do not complain is the collateral damage of so-called man nothing compared to the death of many computers to disabled people and wreak on our innocent? colonialists, you reap what you sow. No new shoots from his neck. No new growth from the United Kingdom, decapitated., But this is our land and we grow and bloom in it where you wither and perish. Consider the execution of a man as compensation. Truth and reconciliation committee without karophsaahphsaa_cheate. Blood in the first downpayment on what we are owed for violations of our land and people.

فارسی  Announcement: Our parade him before the eyes of the world. You cowardly drones and drones and bombs than 5 miles until we could chop one head, but two immediately spring from the bloody stump instead. You can defeat us. You give us a pit of vipers, but you do not have to deal with anti-venom. But when we come to turn a man beheaded, people lose their will to pursue the fight. Their morale is sapped. Do not complain, what is a man called Collateral Damage, compared with the computer-driven maimings deaths of many innocent people, our revenge on you? You reap what you sow colonists. No new head sprouting from his neck. You cut any new chief of the empire grow. But this is our land and we grow and blossom in it, where you will wither and perish. Consider the man's death as compensation. Committee truth, no reconciliation. The first payment on the blood of what we owe to rape the land and our people.

Threads - Friday Flash

It could go in one of two ways...

He awoke under a thatched roof as the sunlight streamed in through the straw's interstices. Shackles of light pinned him to the floor, a vestigial auspice of the convict's recent status prior to his breakout.

The forensics team built an exact replica of the shoot-out room, die stamping holes through the doors and walls where the bullets had punched into the room's interior. But it was only when they used red thread tracing the trajectories through those holes, that the room took on the appearance of a cats cradle that had raked and clawed the lives of a whole family.

He squeezed the atomiser of the spraycan, sending vapour fanning out until the fine droplets illuminated the infra-red tripwires through the filter of his night-vision goggles. He performed the action repeatedly until he had a mental map of the beams, knowing that his own sinuous movements would have to be as light and airy as that of the hairspray.

The problem with doing your own cornrows is that you can't but help pull the hair tighter away from the scalp, than when someone else was doing it for you. He missed his daughter's supple fingers that used to braid his locks for him and though his arthritic hands could still twist the braids, they were too gnarled and bent to thread the beads.

Having unpacked the six foot of DNA coiled into the cell nucleus, a gob of spit bound like Samson between two pillars, she proceeded to photograph it. Not diffraction images, of building up pictures from absences and lacunae, but actual direct light exposure, she knew would likely bring the whole damn human edifice crashing down on all their heads.

He leaned over his sink and spat blood into it, mottling the white porcelain with red until the water from the tap fretting away at its tensile strength finally overcame its resistance and swept it away towards the plughole. When finally the blood-flow had slowed so that it was just a streak of red spittle stretching down past his chin and on to the folds of his neck like a stalactite, he knew he would be avenged of this insult that same night.

It wasn't his hemophilia that did for him, seeing as the bullet had wrought destruction on too much tissue for even a fully-functioning coagulation cascade to be able to plug with platelets and clots. Lying there clutching his gut with a slow bleed, the fibrinogen chain gangs forging fibrin chains still performed their futile toil, like breaking rocks under the burning scorch of the sun.

The string ballistic trajectories emanating through slits in the surfaces, unwittingly modelled the quantum world in which the act of observation collapsed the wave function and made the bullets seemingly behave with the singularity of solid matter. Therefore the police were never able to fathom other possible behaviour patterns behind the arc of the projectiles.