A Mouse's House and I Hate Italy

These two pieces were published at Danse Macabre du Jour on April 19, 2011.

A Mouse's House

Outside, the rollicking pale waste,
Shadings of black and white clouds,
Softly waves over the sky.

The balloon floats, waiting for its fall.
Chiaroscuro textures form gently
Across the smooth curve.

A couch lies, lost, sitting, waiting.
It’s left for taking at no cost,
Perched over the curb until…

Leaping, the cat moves slowly,
As if suspended in time,
Through the vacant glass.

A drip, dripping,
Echoes through the house
Clearly, with resonance.

A breathless impression of sound
Comes heaped in a jacket pile
With stillness from the ears poking out.

That gentle sobbing sigh,
Nearly lost in ambient noise,
Hides, one with rooms and buoys.

All is betrayed from order:
Over, under, wrinkled, torn,
Scattered, barely worn.

Fool! Brushed the drooping curl,
Peaceful in parallel slits,
Now, rhythmic venting winds.

I Hate Italy

I hate Italy; Italy hates me. It’s as if I’m a returning Etruscan King; the land itself rises against me. Heat and humidity are sent to dull my wits as I come to Milan. In Venice, whilst I plot its demise, the ancient winding roads conspire to confound and irritate my companions and I. We are but three wise men following a star to our destination; why are we dealt with so harshly? Is this not the home of the faith? Is every new pilgrimage such a threat? I feel fortunate that I did not leave without some spoil, or else all would be in vain. I gladly walk from this place in my new boots of Spanish (an aesthetic adjustment to the truth, they’re actually Italian) leather.

Traveller

This story was published as a short short at Fiction at Work on June 16th 2010.

Traveller

An unknown foreigner (for I am foreign wherever I go), a twenty-two year old man (if I am that yet), died (for I am that already) at ten o’clock on the night of November the twenty-second while reading Cortazar against a lamppost which a car, derailed by the fog, smashed into at one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, passing first through his body like butter before hitting the stale, rock-hard bread of his illuminated support. How well this would all fit in with Oliveira’s wonderful conception of the absurd, and mine as well, that I could sit here looking for a blank page in a near full notebook to write about my own death. For I am dead; my epitaph is written. So I wonder why I hitch all through this countryside, and others, looking for beauty, recognising it in everything from the worm returning from its concrete exile to the sewer grate I have used as a urinal, and all those green fields, hills, and trees, each resonating with a praiseworthy internal aesthetic I cannot find in myself. Is that why I keep traveling? Because I only find ugliness within, and I hope and I pray that the more I ravenously devour of this external wondrousness the better it might hold back my dismay? For I am dead, it is true, and rotting away; this shell is my mausoleum, tombstone, and grave. I will go to sleep beneath that bus shelter across the street and wake up tomorrow knowing I died today and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to start again.

Mountain

This poem was originally published at Everydaypoets.com on July 27th, 2009.

Mountain

Switzerland, mountains:
the beating of hoofs,
the charge of kings,
Hannibal and his men
their souls aflame with Aries’ fire; whilst
a Citroen carries my bored imagination through this –

a lone priest walks in silence. He carries through steep terrain, as penitence for man’s sins, a weighty burden, the word of God

– landscape of terrible immediacy and wonderful beauty –

a man alone, with scarce the knowledge of what lies beyond, faces sheer cliffs of stone with naught but his hands and their creations; what gall it took, what gall it takes, the first time?

– now appropriated by tourists.

An idyllic village with thatched roofs and stone chimneys surrounds a clockfaced steeple church. The smells and sounds of home, family, friends and food waft to the nearby hills where a traveler lies, his legs buried by rocks, but his mind free to rejoice in the continuance of all he has and ever will know.