"torn" (an experiment in sequencing)

EVIDENCE

And this body intends to be nowhere else but here, sitting on this chair; the one with the legs made of saliva.

The object of this physique is to establish whether or not the seat, supported on its spittle-limbs, is in fact a chair or not.

These bulky bones make an impression on this chintz cushion that is stuffed with teeth-torn nails; jagged and ripped half-moons.

The air is thick with terror. It passes through the investigative figure’s shaking lungs and re-emerges as a shared joke.

Tears the size of lagoons drop to the carpet which, is no longer a nylon weave but has become instead a shaved scalp.

The formless form places a cracked glass to its thirst, what was once clear, cool water is now strands of hair. It chokes.

Fingerprints litter the floor and on the bed a greasy pillowcase shows where a phantom head shifts uneasily from side to side all night.

Sleep is impossible until the conundrum is solved. The weight of an insomniac is equal to that of a 50 litre barrel of blood.

It tosses, scratches, rubs. Flecks of irritation permanently mess that corner. But it is not known why this phenomenon occurs.

Neither is it understood who or what dirties these clothes; shit-stained underwear skid-marked with itches.

Off-white sweat patches mapped into armpits. Mucous seepage everywhere.

Everywhere.

A climate of effluvia everywhere.

A Lice

When I stare at my miserly body mirrored in the intimate imitation of the hours of yesterday, I ache to step outside the limitations of its guilt-edged frame.

I want to go beyond the sensation of the scared child glaring blackly back, to shut-down its tirade of tyrannical thoughts and openly become a ferocious cloud, a mighty waterfall or a cyclical happening of ceaseless breaths.

I have prodded and pushed myself into many inappropriate positions. I have tried to face-up to the lies of the loaded dice and I have eaten the earthly flesh from both sides of the nonsense-mushroom; only to gag on its bitterness.

Wonderland was the world I was told to long for; the place where anything could happen, the place where I could grow a new head.

Instead I have become my own infatuation, my own torturer and my own mean-minded master. I wear weird costumes and queer masks, I perform bizarre tasks. I invent fabulous horrors for myself and I disobey my commands. There are no rules here. I drop like sand through my own fingers; I am an esoteric storyteller.

And I am the heroine, hurled into outrageous adventures, swirling anticlockwise through corridors of locked doors.

I tease myself with out-of-reach keys and ingest drugs that make me shrink, then swell me to enormous proportions. I cry tears big enough to drown in and float along in this plot like an upturned boat.

Occasionally I get stranded on a strange island, where cats and mice play cat-and-mouse games with me and scare away the imaginary birds.

Some days, dressed as a white rabbit, I magically return to the beginning, to chastise my make-believe other and taunt my invented self with a hypnotic watch that ticks backwards.

Glove Story

Gloves mate for life but,

the solo-glove is a mutant udder, an other of deformed teats, seeking another. Another in search of its misplaced (s) wanting to pluralise into a conjoined-twining.

It is also a stranded deep-sea creature washed too far ashore, unable to return to its aquatic habits.

Within the solo-glove’s jewelled imagination, it senses the five thefts of the finite.

This uninvited criminal act is deliberately performed by a tricky sand-villainess. Often regarded as that in which judgements flourish alongside one another, this femme fatale steals the solo-glove’s liberties.

This uninvited criminal act is deliberately termed, ‘Sightseer’ and purposely labelled, womanly.

Undeterred by her sticky mittens, the solo-glove suffers incessant dizzy spells but, as our unlawful lady’s name suggests, she is not only the solo-glove’s nemesis, she is also the solo-glove’s honoured guest.

The scheming of those refracting, factual moons, whose relatives are not adverse to any occurrence that has too many broken others, is represented by those devious brothers; Previously, Currently and Up-and-coming. They are the solo-glove’s fractalised selves.

When it is past the tense stage and no waking-words can alter this because its

nocturnal-flagships have emerged and merged, the solo-glove’s emasculated cries will take first prize, morning, noon and night AND IT WILL CALLOUT FOR JUSTICE!

And see, here are the solo-glove’s gory hands, and its embarrassed eyes, and swinging sex organs that spit and crackle and flash –

All are so quick to vanish it’s as if a star has come to personally deliver the collapsed pain of its spectacular implosion.

To ensure the solo-glove does not forget it is inseparable from its other-handed pair, thumbprints are taken.

Despite this, the solo-glove continues diving though ultramarine hoops, searching for forlorn treasure-maps, grabbing at sheets and stabbing at meat.

And slowly but surely, the next phase appears to go on and on and on, eating the solo-glove’s heart out.