An Oak

In a jar I planted an acorn that I found one day whilst walking through some woods. After a few days a little shoot appeared and nervously pushed out two leaves to taste the air. When everything seemed safe, three more came almost overnight and quickly turned dark green, sawing my kitchen windowsill with their wobbly edges. All I had was a jar and I had to wrap it with paper to stop algae growing a fuzzy beard behind the glass. When I am eating my breakfast it sometimes catches my eye and I feel guilty for holding it hostage, teasing it with a view of the outside where it should be but then I think; without me it would not exist at all. It would be squirrel food. So it's lucky in its glass cage. Perhaps when it's older I'll set it free, plant it in a calm spot letting roots sneak down, stretching in every direction tickling both sky and soil, stitching air and earth. Then when I go for walks there would be a friend waiting for me constantly. Solid and unmoving, expanding with me over the years. We could tell each other secrets which fall then turn brown and melt into the ground. Each bump and curve will know my fingers and a new bud would be inspected as if it had sprouted on my own arm. If a heavy storm should break a branch the crack would end in my heart. Although younger than me in body, the oak's spirit would have the knowledge of all its forefathers. Untouchable wisdom absorbed through countless lifetimes only faintly, suggestively audible if I press my ear to hear the sap rise.

An Ant

I've been rubbing my face with my hands for a long time and stars dance seductively in my head and I lose sense of up and down and feel nauseous. When I open my eyes the stars invert and become flies that hungrily crawl over everything, desperately seeking a crack in my eyes to escape. As I try to catch one I accidentally hit a young man sitting next to me. He says it's OK after I apologise and I shake his hand and I like him. I tell him I like him and he blushes as the flies crawl on his face and I laugh because he doesn't see them so I try to wipe them away and he jumps back. Sorry, I say, sorry it's OK and this time his limp hand is not so firm in my grasp and the relentless pain in my side bites and I try not to think about my brother. But as always it's futile to not think and it makes me angry what they did to him. Sorry I say again, I'm just upset about my brother don't mind me, what's you name? Sorry, I like you, I do, what's your name? I forget it instantly and his name is gone like the blurred view in the window the moment I hear it. He looks away pretending not to notice me like they all do as I take a secret drink from a bottle everyone sees. It's like water to me now. I remember when it burned. When he was alive. We would burn our throats together. It scares me to think about those times. I don't want to be scared, so I forget. My brain is so heavy it pushes down on my eyes and I fall into my hands again and the feeling of rubbing my face becomes my entirety. I'm tired and I feel nothing but a gentle curving motion that my head falls into and my mother pulls me towards her then I'm nauseous again and need to open up before I land on the floor. I can't focus and might have started crying I'm not sure but I'm shaking more than normal and I touch the metal and it reassures me that there is something solid in the world. Moments of reality try to catch my attention but the bottle's my barrier, my filter, and reality's impotent failure goes unnoticed. The scar on my left hand has better luck. We were trying to make a kite. I'm not even sure any more how it happened but his hand slipped and the blade passed over the back of my hand effortlessly. It's strange, it wasn't painful until our mother saw it and over-reacted as she always would to our injuries. Now it's just a white line, sometimes barely visible but it calms me, to look at it. Scares me to think of those times. Nor sure why, just doesn't sit right in me for some reason. Maybe because it's the only good time I had and I don't want to wear out the memories? A jolt wakes me. The tram's not at a stop, everyone is looking at each other with question marks on their faces. The young man glances at me and I tell him it'll be OK nothing to worry about. See, there's the driver coming, problem will be sorted in no time I say. Then she's coming right at me, the driver, right at me with my mother's face. She knows I've done something wrong, that I've got something I shouldn't have. She's going to take it away from me. I won't let her. Can't let her. But there is no escape. Or maybe there is? No. No, I can't do that, I need to save that for them, for their punishment. She's right there, looking at me, I need to think. But before I have the chance she turns and starts doing something with the door next to me. My heart is outside my chest. Why can't someone open a window in here? It's like they're afraid of air. Take it away from me I almost scream but then I remember its purpose, its reason and I calm myself. The driver is no longer my mother and I discover that no-one ever will be. Door problem fixed, we're trundling happily along again and outside is back to its fleeting blurriness and I don't know what I am doing here, where I am going. It's pointless. But the white line reminds me and I'm sick I lost my resolve. I know what they're thinking, they pity me, or, how can he? At this time of day! Like there is a proper time! An acceptable time, a time where a man can do whatever he wants and then the ant crawls out undetected from under the seats in its endless servitude to its queen, unaware that he'll never be able to return home, their pity is wasted on me so I deflect it onto the ant. I wonder how he got here. A little star blown off course his light will fade and pass silently on uncharted. He wrestles with a crumb of something and it will be his futile death march; attempting to deliver this offering.

Return Home

Melted snow seeps into my sock through the hole in my shoe. Before this moment everything was OK. But now. Now I am uncomfortable and all comforts of home assault me from all angles of their ingrained memories. Little demons. A nightmare fever journey through foreign winding endless black alleys inhabited by pleasure assassins whose poison is their very blood. Tendons strain as their needles ache for the bed of my vein to ooze forth the shadow carriage to Hell.

Happily tired on a free train as my plastic was the wrong type; the numbers must be raised. Should I feel guilty? I wanted to pay but couldn't. The uniform eyes me with each passing, screaming internal abuse that barely manages to bypass manifestation on her face. Sink into the chair. Become invisible. I wanted to pay but couldn't. Dodging fares, jumping carriages. It's the same feeling now as then, as boys we could pay but didn't want to. Bring down the system hurt the Man at every opportunity we ride for free can't catch us give false names anyway. Dodging caffeine riding mortgage whores we burst from the steel vein into crossed off no-go zones where wires burn and little criminals recycle greed into need among the carbon monoxide coated weeds whose only rain is orange piss or vomit.

Dry socks, surrounded by the little demons and tigers of modernity with some motorized annoyance screaming its territorial announcement for miles, everything has claws with which to gouge. When a machine does the work a man's satisfaction has nowhere to fall and no job is done better than one basking in pride.

Shaking nervously with each scratch of my pencil a weary basil plant at my table also feels the angry buzzing motor and droops further.