Tuesday 28 July 2009

A Lust for the Coolth

Today I am coiled and maleficent, squatting in the corner eating meat off the bone. Slimy dreams and sweat-sopped sheets have conspired to clog up something within me. I can see fingers underneath all the furniture, double-jointed and mucky-knuckled, undulating implausibly and stretching towards my toes. The future is circling, a clacking, scabrous raven, calling carrion to its bone-beaked brethren. I blame the sarcastic summer, raising her skirts of nimbus and mist and pissing on us while St Swithin watches and wanks himself sick.

Curse this can’t-be-arsed pseudo-summer, clinging to us like wet blankets, muggy and claggy and no good to anyone. I want the winter back, crabbed and skinning, cauled with hoar-frost, ghastly, grinning, walking backwards like the dead. The winter that strips the trees to whips that slit my skin and let me back inside again. I want the winter moon, a cold mother in a cap of bone, I want the frigid air that shoves its fist deep down your throat and steals away your breath and I want the snow that comes slow, not falling, just ambling through the air like a billion drunken white bees, then falls faster, niveous, insidious, to coat the world like ash. A cold Pompeii.

15 comments:

  1. I do not like the winter, but I want your winter, it sounds fab.

    There exists TV footage of a camp man being interviewed on the day of 911. He spoke to the camera about the dust and debris.

    "It came falling down, black, like snow"

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  2. From now on, in that particular climate, I'll always think of it as a billion drunken white bees.

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  3. i am in love with two these paragraphs. i take them home to tack to my wall. thank you.

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  4. Absolutely lovely. Also? I will be sending my husband to you this winter. He needs someone to enjoy it with. Me? All I do is talk about moving to the desert of Tucson, Arizona.

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  5. I want the winter back right fucking now, I miss it, I yearn for it, I love it. So I agree with you. Nicely done.

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  6. FJR - That's upsetting and beautiful at once.

    Zxvasdf - careful they don't sting you now...

    gamefaced - Take it with love, I like what you do - ever read Dylan Thomas?

    Mongoliangirl - Send him over, I'll wrap him up in muffs and mittens and feed him pea and ham soup. Then when it's summer, I'll come and drink Pimms with you?

    Rassles - In the winter, nobody expects you to wear sundresses and frolic all honey-limbed in the tender grass. You can stay inside and get on with the serious business of writing down your important thoughts and masturbating to Jerry Springer.

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  7. That is brilliant, tight and exploding prose.

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  8. I just wish I could mix summer food (ie. tomatoes for which I have a huge fetish) with winter temperatures. Also, a little pinot grigio came out my nose with that masturbating to Jerry Springer remark.

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  9. Your writing fizzes with free-spirited, sexy sophistication. Yeah!

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  10. not sum but some. and if not already, 'autobiography in red' anne carson. do consume.

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  11. You got skills.

    I am wowed.

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  12. what ellie said. yr real good, sp, real good.

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  14. It is just brilliant, Sack Posset. I am amazed. I came back and read it again and it was even more powerful. The voice just swings, it is an instrument. I could sit here all day and tell you how why I like your writing but it would bore you. How are your studies going?

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