No waiting

I will no longer wait
for this bus
because buses slow down
if you are waiting for them
and it makes no odds
if I see the very first moment
of its bumper
rounding the corner
at the end of the road

It will either come
or it will not come
whether I wait 

or not

No
I will no longer wait
but I will stand here
because this bus-stop
is as good a place to stand
as anywhere else

and I will watch the sun
creep in and out of the clouds

and I will watch children
running near the kerb

and I will hear their parents
scolding them

and I will watch
a starling
on the gutter of a house
preening itself

and I will breathe
the bus-stop air
rather than the air by the crossing

and that will make a change

and perhaps
while I stand here
watching and breathing and listening
I will count the chips of paint
on the bus-shelter
and fancy that I can see a face
forming in the dry stud
of chewing gum
that someone has posted
on the glass

and I will imagine 

the sweetness of the gum

on my tongue

But I am not waiting for the bus
because it takes too much energy
and I don't have that kind of wealth

No
No waiting
for the bus
even though
you said
you might be on it

Winter Blues

'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I'll get it fixed. Don't you worry about that. Don't you worry. I'll get it fixed before the cold weather comes. I've got a guy does things for me like this. Jim. I'll get him to come over and have a look, ok. He'll fix it. He's good at boilers. I'll get him to come over next week. You here next week? I'll get him to come over and have a look... What day is best for you? He'll have to come and have a look then probably he'll have to order some parts, so it might take a day or two to get them because... these old boilers, well, the merchants don't keep the parts in stock now, you know. You can still get them, like, but you have to order them, you know.

'Ok, so I'll get Jim to come and have a look and then when he's got the parts he'll come back and fix it. You know, it might take a week or two, but it'll be done before the cold weather comes you can be sure of that. I don't want to mess you around. You'll need the heating when the cold weather comes. These old blocks are freezing in the winter - no insulation, see - they didn't think about that when they built them, I suppose. Didn't have the technology, maybe.
'Rightio is there anything else while I'm here?'

'Well, you said that you would fix the window in the bathroom last time you came ...'

'I did, I did! I haven't forgotten, but I need to... I just haven't had time to get to the glass place, you know. But it's on my list. It's top of my list. For next week. I'll get the glass and come over. And fix it. Do you mind me just letting myself in if you're not here?'

'No no that's... '

'I'll come over next week with the glass and I'll... Right, if there's nothing else I've got to get home. Sharon's got line dancing tonight and I said I'd drop her. All right? I'll love you and leave you then, Amanda, and I'll give you a ring when I've spoken to Jim to let you know when he's coming over. All right?

'Yes that's all right, I suppose.'

'Good, good, see you then, then... I must say you've got the place looking nice. Better than the last guy. Still that's a woman for you, isn't it, making things look nice. Men can't be ars... bothered with stuff like that can they, but no, but yes, you, you've got an eye. I can tell. I should take you on, eh? Take you on as a stylist, eh? You could sort them all out, couldn't you? Ok then, bye bye...'

'Bye, Phil...'

She pushed the door closed behind him and turned and leaned against it. She could hear his footsteps on the concrete in the stairwell, the resonating tang of his wedding ring hitting the iron handrail. Then his voice booming and indistinct as he met some other tenant down below. What was he wriggling out of doing for them, she wondered.

She hadn't got it looking nice. She hated it. All she done so far was hang some of her tapestry pieces on the wall. The two garden scenes she done for her degree show, and the framed seascape that Dad had liked so much.

She was desperate to hide the reality of the rooms. The damp plaster, the peeling wallpaper. She knew what she would do if it were her flat but as a tenant, a poor tenant, she was only too aware of the large sum Phil held as her bond. He was a git, she thought. Harmless, but a git nevertheless. He hadn't yet done any of the repairs she had asked him to do since she moved in: the bath tap washer; the leaking cistern on the toilet. Eventually she had given up waiting and borrowed some tools from Marchin and done it herself. Marchin wanted to do it for her but she wouldn't let him.

He had wanted to do a lot for her. She wouldn't let him do any of it. She could feel his Polish machismo in every throbbing sinew of his body. And while she loved that strength, the confidence in his blood, she hated how small she felt against him. She despised the simpering child that she regressed into in his arms. Shrank from every feeling of power she had painstakingly fermented in herself.

So while he became more and more dominating of her she found herself wanting more and more to resist. Their love-making which had been playful, sensitive and passionate in the beginning, became rough and angry, wild and unpredictable. He took to leaving while she slept so she'd wake up alone, wondering where he had gone.

So, when Cameron told her he'd seen Marchin with someone else she had ended it. And he didn't fight for her. It was, she felt afterwards, the typical male tactic of behaving so badly that eventually the woman would end the relationship and then he, as he already had, would take his victimhood and his urges into the bed of another. She'd felt the pattern many times before.

'Fuck him,' she said out loud, pushed herself forcefully from the door and into the kitchen.

'Bastard!'

She put the kettle on and looked out onto the swing park below. Two kids were sitting on the swings, rocking, but not swinging. They were, what, fifteen? Sixteen, maybe... hanging on to childhood securities but too cool to play. She had long hair. He had his hood up. Amanda, even from this distance, could sense the balance of tensions between them.

'Don't do it,' she mumbled to the girl as the kettle switched itself off. 'Don't get taken in by it.'

She made sweet chai tea, dangling and dipping the tea bag on its string. She watched the colour of the water slowly shift in hue until after a few minutes she pulled the bag out, held it over the glass mug with one hand, and ran the fingers of the other down the string to the soaking pillow at the end. She squeezed, and dark droplets fell into the mug like blood into water, clouding and swirling until they disappeared into the brew.

She lifted the cup to her lips and blew.

She looked out again and saw the trees beyond the swing-park had lost their leaves. When had that happened? Last time she looked they had been bedecked in verdant foliage. Now they etched lines against the grey clouds. It was getting dark, too.

The boy and the girl stood up. She studied the chair of the swing, ran her palms across her buttocks, while he hitched up his beltless jeans.

Whatever they had talked about had changed their status. A new stage in their negotiations had been reached because while she stood looking at her fingers on the chain, he stepped up to her and kissed her cheek. She shrieked and pushed him away in mock shock. Amanda thought she could hear her say 'Who said you could do that?'

But Amanda knew that she had said it even if she hadn't used words.

He was brave, though, stood his ground, and evidently had some persuasive comment for the girl. She turned to him and let him take her hands. He pulled her towards him and their faces met.

Then she hit his chest and ran off laughing.

Amanda stood and watched the sky gradually darken. Then, from below, a voice drifted up to her - a woman's voice, singing. A deep sorrowful voice, singing an old song. The notes hung in the air. Maybe it was the black woman who had smiled at her in the stairwell yesterday, now lilting her desperate song out into the early evening.

'... caaaan't help lovin' that maan of mine.'

Ella sings...

She Got A Weekend in Paris

An Electric Tomatoes piece written in just over an hour.  We stabbed words in a book to come up with the prompt - She got a weekend in Paris

Aunt Jocelynne sighed at the other end of the line.

'It was quite quick in the end.'

Her soft accent curled around the words.

'He did not suffer. He was asleep anyway. His heart just... it just stopped. Gave up. It just didn't want to fight any more.'

'Right,' said Phil. 'I'll tell her, Jocelynne, thanks for ringing. I'll tell her when she comes in. She'll probably want to phone you. In a way I'm glad I can be the one to break it to her.'

'She will come, won't she? The funeral... and there will be the... the reading of... what is it?.. in English?.. you know, the wishes... the inheritance... what is it?..'

'The will.'

'Yes, the will. She will come, won't she? There is no-one else...'

'I'm sure she will. She wanted to come before... when we heard he was ill... but she couldn't get time off. She'll be devastated. They'll have to give her time off now. Claude was the closest thing she had to a father.'

'Good, good. Let me know your plans.'

'Course... of course.'

Three days later, at the station, Anna kissed Phil as the London train drew into the platform.

'I wish you were coming too.'

'I know... I know... I do too.'

She clattered the small suitcase up into the carriage, battled the persistent automatic door. Phil walked down the platform parallel to her as she made her way to her seat. But it was on the opposite side of the carriage so she could only see him if she remained standing.

At last the train pulled out and with a final fingertip kiss she waved him goodbye and slumped down into her seat.

She liked train journeys, especially travelling alone and with little in the way of luggage.

She unzipped her backpack and pulled out her book. But it lay on the table in front of her, unopened. Her hands stayed in her lap, her gaze fixed out of the window. She watched the weft and warp of the landscape as it slipped by. Fields and hedges. The running of fence wires, power-lines, the silvered rails of the sister track. All became a conspiracy of lines as the train slithered through the countryside. All scheming together underscored by the continuo of locomotion. She felt the wheels on the rails – ticketataa-ticketataa-ticketataa. Watched the telephone wires rise to the punctuation of the poles then swoop and sag back down again before cresting again. A wave of black lines – the musical stave of the train – drawing her eyes and her ears, mesmerising her, seducing her into the lull and pause of her memories.

Claude. Uncle Claude.

The smell of tabac clinging to the lapels of his jacket. A heady fruitiness to his breath when he picked her up and lifted her onto his knee after Sunday lunch.

She reaches up and touches his face, reading the grey stubble on his cheeks with her fingers. Then he seizes her tiny hand in his great fist so that just the tips of her fingers are showing and he lifts them to his open mouth and noisily plays at eating them. She could feel the edge of his teeth.

'J't' mange!' he said, ''j't' mange, mon petit déjeuner!'

And she would scream and giggle at the terrible monster he had become and flee from his lap, laughing, only to hide behind her mother's apron and wait for him to come and find her.

The connection was straightforward enough and she slept as the Eurostar slipped into the darkness of the tunnel.

When she awoke they were already passing among the banlieu – grey concrete tower blocks with broken windows and graffiti. Factories and rundown estates. The signature hinterland of every city.

But because she had slept it was only on arriving at Le Gare du Nord that she learned of the delays: a suspected terrorist incident at St Lazare. There would be no trains out till Monday at the earliest.

'There's nothing I can do, Auntie.'

Silence from her aunt at the other end.

'Tant pis,' came the reply at last, but Anna could hear the wheeze of emotion in her aunt's voice – her tight breathing,

'We'll see you soon on Monday, then, à bientôt.'

'Yes, Auntie. Baises... bon baises!'

But the line was already dead.

After a visit to the station information centre and a short Metro ride, Anna found her way down a quiet side street, Rue de Paimpol, to a small pension. She registered and was shown to her room where she washed and changed. Then she walked out into the late afternoon sun. Now for the first time she recognised the distinctive odour of the Paris streets.

It was still warm and she allowed herself to wander back down towards the Metro station but then at the last minute she changed her mind and walked over to a small café across the square.

She ordered iced tea.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the soft breeze, then reached into her bag and pulled out her book once more.

Le Petit Prince smiled guilessly from the cover as it lay on the table – his crown still as bright as ever. She decided that perhaps she didn't even need to read it. Actually. It was enough to just have it there. She remembered the soft whispering of her uncle as he read it to her. She could feel his breath on her ear.

She stroked the paper cover with her thumbs. She felt the the memory of Claude's hands on the leaves. Then her fingers opened the book, riffled through the edges - and smoothed the page.

Page One.

Here was Claude in her head, in her heart. Uncle Claude...here! Here they were in Paris together, drifting once again, from planet to tiny planet in search of peace.

Leonard Cohen

A poem written in an Electric Tomatoes session just after the death of Leonard Cohen.

Suzanne took me down

She had a place by the river

She put on her old turntable

As I flicked through her vinyl

But all I found to listen to

While the storm outside was raging

Was an album by The Beastie Boys

And Revolver by The Beatles

Then she looked up and noticed

While the boats rocked by outside

That the evening was descending

And that I really should be leaving

So I went and called an Űber

22^nd May 2018

She was a bird

She was a bird
borne above the earth
on softest wings
sunlight glancing
on iridescent feathers

He, a cloud,
grey with pendant rain

And with every beat of her wings
upon the blue door of heaven
the sky began to shake
and the rain to fall
his tears tumbling
upon the cheeks of the earth
until all were spent

And beneath
where dust and death had ruled
new life sprang forth 
and verdant pastures
greened the fortunate land
the air filled
with the scent of mint
and peppermint
of jasmine
and coriander

Are you all right?

Are you all right?

How I hate the question...
What do you want me to say?

Yes, I'm all right
I'm still breathing
Is that what it takes
to 'be all right'?

I won't mention the inner turmoil...
I love you, so
I won't inflict upon you
the twisting and turning
of my burning heart
the hatred and scorn I feel
for my own
self-destructive tendencies

I won't tell you
about how I dream
of slashing the flesh of my arms
with a razor blade
because then you would worry
that the breathing bit
of being all right
might be compromised

You would wonder
who the creature is
that you thought you knew
that you had
compartmentalised

I don't WANT to slash my arm
it just feels as if
that would be some form of release
for the uncomfortable energy
that's churning around in here

Feel the flesh separating from itself
see blood bubbling from within
carrying the toxin perhaps
dropping
onto the painstaking earth
and dissipating

I WON'T slash my arm
Because then you would see...
You could no longer ignore the truth of me

And if you can't ignore it then neither can I

So don't ask
if I am all right
because the truest answer
is impossible to formulate
and even a close approximation
is likely to obliterate
the true complexity

Just accept I'm travelling
and sometimes
the road is filled with rubble
so if you see me stumble
just reach out and
take my hand
for a moment

You take yourself to the mountain top
and sit amongst the clouds
you trek down to the sea's edge
and feel the rhythm of the turning earth
you press your hands
into the sand of the desert
feel the heat upon your skin
seek the place
the heart's honest landscape
where you the earthling
seeking heaven
best fit in

My journey
is a different one
it takes place while I sit here
seeing the thoughts flash by
with the eye of my mind
as if on a train
but the train is motionless
and it is the world that moves
I find doorways in my thoughts
secret passages
tunnels and traps
cloudless skies
red eyes
bloated cheeks
blistered skin

It happens while I sit -
feeling the internal bleeding
counting purple bruises -
but I am confident
that at some point
I will straighten the fibres
twine them together
and draw the thread
across the loom
and all the colours
I have found
will lie in harmony
against each other
and the fabric
will at last
make sense

Rude Awakening

Another piece from an Electric Tomatoes session... Our prompt was Rude Awakening


He hears it below.

A key in the lock.

The handle turns. Hinges grind and squeal into the night. The door expressing its pain at this untimely assault.

A hiatus as whoever it is negotiates the coming in with whatever it is they're carrying.

Then slow steady steps. Feet on concrete stairs as whoever it is manoeuvres whatever it is, whatever heavy thing it is, from one step to the next.

He lies in his bed.

He listens, eyes wide. Listening to the dark echoes rising through the carcass of the building. Listening to large, sharp-edged noises magnified by cold, hard surfaces. Noises like things. Solid. Ungainly. Cracking the darkness, fracturing the thick silence of one in the morning.

It's cold.

He shudders. Pulls the quilt up over his shoulder and under his chin. Squeezes his eyes shut as if this will deaden the din. But the squeezing sets his blood to throb in his ears, it floods his head. It muffles the noise of the ascent into a sinister unknown. He cannot recognise the edges the sound – cannot define the lines that create it. It is darkly dangerous, unfathomable. He releases his eyelids again, softens his grip on the quilt, reaches out with his ears to know the sound he's hearing.

There's a cough of exertion.

Whoever it is is on his landing. Whatever it is is being dragged slowly past his door, towards the next flight. A rasping heaviness. Dragged. Breathing. Heavy, effortful. Each drag of whatever it is preceded by a hit of breath against vocal folds. Not an utterance, not a word, just an exhalation constricted by muscular contraction.

Whoever it is has reached the next flight. The rhythm shifts again. He lies in bed imagining the scene beyond the door. He pieces it together in his mind. A dark figure. Male, hooded, heavy. More than heavy – lumpen. Meat and bone. Gripping whatever it is with large strong hands and yet grappling with the awkwardness of it. Filling the space. Pushing aside the emptiness of the stairwell. Overfilling it. Whoever it is. Whatever it is. Air closing back into the space as whoever it is moves up, step by step, lifting whatever it is, step by step by step.

The sounds are softening – no – shrinking, as they ascend beyond him.

A sense of relief and yet, here, in this darkness the questions pull at his eyelids. Prise them apart. His eyes reaching out now into the darkness for answers, quickly now, before the sounds cease completely. For in the silence the detail will detach still further. The sounds will slip into memory, memory just slip into colour and slowly fade. The light from the window lifts itself out of the darkness, finds the edge of the frame. His mind cues in and settles the room's other features – pieces of furniture, the looming wardrobe, his own body – into place.

He projects his imaginings against the screen of the dark wall by the door. He sees through the building, up the stairs to the top landing. He sees the whoever and the whatever bound together in some deathly embrace as whoever searches his pocket for a key.

He must know now.

He must answer the questions. What is the whatever? Who is the whoever? Why is this deathly escalation being danced in this the depths of darkness? Secretly, secretively, anonymously paranoically. He pushes the quilt back down from his chest. Rolls onto his back. Feels for the edge of his bed with his right foot. Hooks his foot over the edge. Pulls himself to the diagonal and further. Reluctantly complies with the compulsion to get up, to leave the cocoon of his bed and face the mystery.

Feet to floor. Cold, rough, wooden floor. He searches for slippers blindly. Finds them.. It's not too late. He doesn't have to go. He does. He has to know. There's a panic now. The noises from the stairwell lost in the sounds of his own movement. Confused and confounded. He is desperate to cling to the vestiges of the strange ascent, but they are dying. Pining away. Questions. The questions. Demanding in his head. Boiling in his blood. Forcing him to move. He's standing. Groping through the darkened bedroom. No, don't turn the light on or it will all dissolve. Get to the front door. Key. Where's the key? There. Unlock it. Pull the door open. There. Now he's outside on the landing, counting the noise above him, measuring it in his head, feeling how it fits. He's estimating how much longer before it ceases. How can he know? Move, just move! Up the stairs. Straight up. Two at a time. Running up the stairs.

Distant sounds now blocked out by the sounds of his own feet on the staircase. His breathing. His pushing of air into air. Like thunder. Next landing. He stops to listen. Silence... No noise? Then a step and a thump as whatever it is is dropped heavily down. Has whoever it is arrived? Is that it? Is whoever it is there now?

He runs again. Up and up the stairs, not waiting now. Not stopping to check. Full flight. Up and up. Feeling the danger rising in his cheeks, surging up in his throat. The sickening taste of running into his own death. Is this it? Will this be the end of everything?

Another landing and as he looks up he sees above him light. Light cracking through a doorway then splashing, flooding over to the opposite wall. An opening and yet a final opportunity. He knows the opening will close in seconds. That the opportunity will die. That the questions will be unanswered.

But it holds, the light. It stays and still stays, while whoever it is lugs whatever it is over the threshold and into the room. He's on the final flight. Hard-hitting the steps to get to the top.

And then the voice...

• Who's there?

It's not his voice. It's a female voice. Elderly. Cracked. Tired.

• Who is it?

He stops. Shocked.

• I'm not alone! Who are you? What do you want?

She's calling out unseeing. He hears the terror in his voice. She cannot see him. She's just hitting out with words, hoping to strike one feeble stroke against the darkness. Craven in the night-time. Her voice is just thin paper skin, watery blood, brittle bone.

He steps up one more step. He can see her now. But she is still blinded by the light in which she stands,

She is small. A small dark figure. A coat. A hat. She is silhouetted against her doorway.

- Who is that?

She speaks again with perhaps a moment more confidence, grown in the fact that she is not yet dead, that whoever it is has not yet pounced. He has not yet struck her, cut her, collapsed her, cast her lifeless to the ground.

- I have no money. You won't find anything.

- She is stalwart, defiant now.

- It won't do you any good.

- I... I...

He tries to understand why, now, he is here, doing whatever it is he is doing. Pounding the night for answers to that which is no longer a question.

- I... I...

- What?

- I... I heard a noise. I...

- Yes... well.

She is irritated now.

- My case is heavy. I apologise if I disturbed you.

- It's... No... I... I just wondered if you needed help.

- No. No, thank you. No help required. Thank you very much. I have managed.

- Yes.

- Yes... Thank you for the thought but...

Her unfinished sentence packed the moment with a dismissal.

- Well, if you're all right, I'll...

- Yes, quite all right, thank you.

- Then I'll... I'll say goodnight.

- Indeed. Goodnight. Goodnight.

The door is closing. He turns to walk back down the stairs. He glances at the door. It is still not quite shut.

She is watching him. He can see where the light is obstructed by her form. He can feel her eye held up against the door cra