creative writing

2010
08.28

teacher likes to rape us. but i dont like to scream.

her fragrant loneliness grabs at my loose fingers, begging.

my judgment is an overflowing cup. more than the glass half full.

she borrows the arrogance to ignore: my face a paint-less picture.

a rotten, standing tree. the desert raining at her words.

my boredom. too big to fit inside my body.

i eat to make myself bigger. to fit the thoughts in.

to hide them from a world that will always be wider than our hips.

herself leaking into my opinions. hatred absolute: of similarities between us.

separating us: the wrinkles on her cheeks. the years in her life. puntuated veins leaking slowly.

her needs sew a too bulging t shirt around my stomach.

pregnant with the love growth. the awkward nakedness spreads. the affair a chafing secret.

she will launch a jail-less revenge. kill me as a character in a book. 5 readers.

moon

2010
07.01

long hair licked the wind as you shone light

on the future past, a life that held you childishly

on that cold cackling night.

Witch Watches from under the stairs as I

stare at a name with your face on

moonworshiper.

drunken moonshine, my numbness

selfmedicated

coffee ring

2010
06.01

Something unmemorable made sadness; but I can’t remember.

Perhaps it was the sign I read: Please don’t wash the dishes; when written: Please don’t remove the dish cloths. The cold coffee cups needing cleaning.

Speckled rounds of the creative writing teacher’s face; eyes following me as she talks of writing. Her words wrap around my neck like a silent noose. The slow chafe of the string on cold flesh.

Myself silenced in the folds of the dark room’s skin. The sign I read: Please don’t jump out the window; when written: Please don’t open the window.

The disappointed coffee cup cries silently. The teacher is a talker to books during the day. Dusting them, studying them. Putting them with labels, remembering them. By Thursday night she is a talker to people. I wonder if she has ever had sex. And the windows scream.

The meaning I read: I want to give you a kiss of apathy you can wank off to;

“I will give you list of anthologies you can send your work off to,” round cheeks say, “The rejection letters are good, they give you something to make you feel like a real writer.”

The windows are trapped by the walls; the people are trapped by the windows. The writers die talking.

And there is no one brave enough to wash the coffee cups. No one will jump out the windows.

murderer murdered

2010
05.23

A murderer with a bloodied intent to cut her body slowly.

The hard kiss and the soft temptation of the blade.

Sudden.

His eyes like weeping glass as he realises he has been fooled.

She will eat him at dawn.

Bathe in his blood; Wash honey on his lips.

She will shed his skin; make gloves with it.

Scalp his head; make a wig with it.

Paint his blood to the tips of her fingers.

Delicious.

 His teeth a pearl necklace. His eyes jewels on her ears.

She will use him for his elegance as he has used her.

Created with life, Creative with death.

Richard and Ruth

2010
05.23

He doesn’t buy shots, he buys the whole bottle. Poured glowing red liquid down the eager mouths of his workmates. They were not friends.

Ruth, workmate, laughed as he lit the red liquid, the bubbling liquorice dripping down her chin. Her white shirt remembering that night.

‘You trying to get me drunk Richard?” laughter loud.

Hairs touched her hand through his shirt. The wet alcohol whispering.

“It’s nothing. Just a shot.”

“Where did you get the money for these drunken escapades? Selling yourself outside Debonairs?”

Her lack of lipstick throbbed on her lips.

“Yes. For the price of a pizza.”

Red

2010
05.13

The washing machine at home cannot know blood had stained her panties.

It was negligent to throw them out, but washing them ment water on his hands. The unpleasant red: curdled. Not lipstick smeared on lover’s lips: she was not loved.

He wore a Manchester shirt. Carelessly unchanged. The unkept sweat pooled on his thighs. Slamming the counter, red liquorice shots ran down his chin. Stained teeth smiled at the girl in the siren dress. Her lipstick matched his intensions.

He piled her into a red Citi. Red light. Green light. Red light. Crash. The misspelled moment driven clear in his mind. Body fluids with no condom mix on the pavement. Luckily the colour of her dress is camouflage. But the blood smeared on her thighs stains her panties.

 Laundromat them for the coffin. His roses white, not red.

Barnacles hostel Dublin, meeting reno

2010
05.10

She was naked the first time they met. Blowing drying her hair in his room, their room. The plug, sandwiched against the door. Her towel half heartedly draped over one arm. She was shaking the last drops of water from her growing blonde hair. Not quite the elegance of a model, but perhaps a loveable mutt in a doggie parlour advert. The swishing and cheerful puffiness of the clean fur.

He startled himself as he swung open the door. Midconversation suddenly silenced as she bounced backwards in belated dignity.

“Oh! Sorry! I…. I didn’t think anyone was going to open that door!” Stupid. She knew someone was going to open the door. Her mind frame fell somewhere between exabitionist and the hazy chaos of living in a hostel for the past three months.

Nestled between the thinness of her wrists and the redness of her lipstick was the confidence that didn’t care. That dared him to open the door. Willed him to.

“Tiana,” her hand outstretched towards him.

“Reno, nice to meet you.”

 The embarrassment in his eyes off set their blueness, bolder and brighter. Instantly a cut out from the rest of the room.

A tighter grip on the towel. Self conscious now.

“Where are you from?” he asks, polite.

“Dublin! Well South Africa originally!” Four months had been enough to erase our identity. And heighten it, depending on the situation. In this situation I assumed him a flight by night traveller. A nobody in Dublin, probably part of a 26 countries in 25 days style tour. Not part of the hostel elite who walked around naked and knew exactly which plate on the cooker actually worked.

“We, my sister Kayla and I, have been living at Jacob’s Inn for the past three months. We have just been kicked out.” The simple version of our traumatic removal from our last hostel. The hurried good byes. Our stuff piled on the dirty pavement. Me sitting on top of it chain smoking the cheap cigarettes from the sympathetic German.

“Where are you from? Just here for the weekend?”

dublin

2010
05.08

On December 4th 2009 Talbot Street, Dublin was a hundred miles long. Our backpacks, loving selected, were large enough to contain a person and arched our backs.  We hobbled like crippled snails past one grungy shop after another.  The Polish supermarket Polaski which specialised in pickled Polish memories, Italian connection the restaurant where Claire would gain (and lose) her first job, the four euro pizza slices and the sinister bridge where the train rattled our heads. Not a leprechaun in sight. No guitar yielding gorgeous Irish boys.

Instead women’s orange self tanned faces peered from matched velour tracksuits. Hair extensions ran down their backs and heavy makeup paraded their faces. Cigarettes lolled on their lips as they bellowed to each other. “Ya bunch of cunts! To the pub!” rang in our ears until we started saying it ourselves.   

In Dublin the river Liffey cuts a defiant hole through the heart of the city. South of the river is all that is posh. North of the river is all that is not. They are unmistakably joined by O’ Connell Bridge, the only bridge in Europe that is wider than it is long. The two halves like Siamese, dizygotic twins. All a part of Dublin, but the identity like the accents, is very different.

On the south side Dunn’s supermarket bursts with fresh berries and shiny wooden floors. On the north side Dunn’s supermarket is crammed with cheap cider and stale bread. On the south side you choose your Friday night dress in a designer boutique. Click your heels down George Street. Stop at Brown Thomas, the Harrods of Ireland, to admire the Roberto Cavalli dress with the green straps and gold brooch between the breasts. 

On the north side you waddle down Henry Street. Fight your way between old ladies with big wheeled prams of grapes and spotty teens selling scratch cards.  You buy your dress from Pennys, the Irish store with a reputation for sweat shops in Asia. Shoes cost the same as a sandwich but a single trip in the rain gives them a stench that cannot be removed; no matter how long you blow them with the hair dryer.

We were very firmly on the north side. I would become a northsider and be proud. But today the flag trumpeting our arrival at Jacob’s Inn felt ominous. Cigarette butts huddled from the cold in the street lining gutters. The next door pub had a typical name like ‘O ’Malleys’ or ‘O’ Grady’s’. It was never without a group of drunken taxi drivers gathered outside for a smoke and a look at your ass.

Inside the walls were an off putting shade of orange and the reception desk was made of cheap plywood. Disinfected air tickled our noses. The receptionist’s hair was shoulder length and greasy.  He was unfriendly and our dreams were shattered. We had expected a converted Celtic castle and instead we had gotten a badly painted tin can.

There were 12 beds in our room and one shower that switched off every 15 seconds. We locked our bags with tiny gold padlocks and trapped them in giant cages. We knew that all our stuff would be stolen the second we turned our South African backs.

 There were two Spanish girls in our room. Two sides of the nationality stereotype coin: one was beautiful, the other utterly crazed. I cannot remember the crazy one’s name, but we often wondered what sad government dole agency was funding her mania. She would fart. Then stare out the window. Then fart some more. She fiddled in our things and shouted at our faces. She would open all the windows in mid winter; her woolly clothes bundled around her body. Then, magically she would introduce herself to us saying “Oh aren’t you the sisters from South Africa? I’ve heard a lot about you!” She was a source of laughter and concern. One day she disappeared.

In contrast Elena’s long, dark hair curled around her features as she chatted on Skype to her girlfriend Mariana. She was from Barcelona or Bar-tha-lona as she pronounced it, with that cute lisp that made her speech childlike. She announced she would teach us Spanish and Catalan (which was her native tongue). But when she put on her orange knit shirt with the flat wooden beads and went out for drinks with friends, she didn’t invite us to join.

She would call me her “little son” and I could never figure out if it was a play on words or if she had confused daughter and son. A strange attack of adventure had made her leave her human resources job in Spain and come to Ireland to learn English. Simple protocol like “How are you?” was a struggle and conversations were jilted. She would not find work in Dublin. She would break up with Mariana. And eventually, I would follow her to Amsterdam.

word rape

2010
04.30

Attacked in a public toilet

The unwanted words pry open her legs

Finger nail ripped out by a struggling wall

Raw cheek smashed against the toilet seat

The marriage of convenience.

The date rape.

The long walk home.

word lust

2010
04.30

The delicious contrast as they size each other up. Snuggle into the warm sentence sandwich. Lay in when they ought to be out working. Drink when they ought to be driving. Sit when they ought to be standing. Lust when they ought to be loving.

The project is pregnant yet fruitless. The bulging words dance with little direction. Tipsy they mingle, flirtatious strangers at a party. Exchanging glances and phone numbers. Hawking gossip and hurrying into bedrooms in a decadent haste. The naughty knickers caught around too eager ankles.