The Ryanaeid

Ryan, you are lame.
It's Creative Monday, but
You are not here.

Napton-on-the-Hill
Probably isn't as cool
As Caffe Nero.

Are you missing out?
Can we have fun without you?
The answer is: yes.

We wrote TV shows
Sonnets and haikus galore!
We're so creative.

We hailed Richard
And worshipped George. So. Much. Laughter.
Whilst drinking coffee;

Vanilla lattes
And chocolate frappuccinos.
They are so tasty.

We sang 3oh!3
"George's sister on my mouth!"
And soe people stared.

But we do not care,
Hell, boy, we're the 603!
We could fucking own

This town. Whilst it's lame,
Surely it's OK for now?
Come back. We miss you.

I'll Always Want More

I wallow in delicious misery
To write your precious name upon my wrist
In biro, making a discovery:
That since we kissed, I'll persist, can't resist.
Your hair, your eyes, your smile; they're so sublime.
I know this for sure, we're been here before.
On my knees, I'd crawl through worse. Give me time.
I'll always want more. It's you I adore.

These tears are poison, deadly, I will drown
Unless you say yes. We were so loved up.
Now we're just fucked up. I'll still wear your crown
With pride, your Queen. So overfill my cup.
I'd trace your perfect face with my fingers,
Your scent, forever on my skin, lingers.

Fine

You kissed me tenderly on the dock,
Apologising for taking so long.
You tried to touch my heart; still under lock.
You said I was so sweet, that that was wrong.
I felt so warm as I lay in your chest,
I thought sharing with you would be alright.
If only I had known it would get messed
Up I wouldn't have held your hand so tight.

I ran my fingers through your curly hair.
I started to cry as you rolled away
From me, in this, my Quebecois nightmare.
All I wanted was one utterance: 'stay',
For you to stroke my cheek and call me 'mine'.
But now I know that it won't be just Fine.

I Poked Him

With this stick I snapped
Off a dead tree, I poked him.
His eyes remained closed.

There's a Party at Your House, part 5.

A small hand with stubby half painted nails can help you up. You can see up the hand’s skirt as you climb to your feet, leaning heavily on the banister. You crave the flesh and lead it into the nearest bedroom.

You can fall into the arms of the wasted fresher, eager to add a notch to her proverbial bedpost. You can get caught on the rigged up webcam easing your fingers underneath her pink, lacy knickers, massaging the soft brown skin below her waist and then leaning into kiss her as she passes out on the carpet, her mini skirt riding up around her hips.

You can go too far, you judgement and moral centre having got thrown away with most of your clothes an hour or so ago.

You can wake up with a fuzzy mouth and an ulcerated tongue, a cramp in your shoulder and a carpet burn on your knee.

You pause in the door. Go on, head for the kitchen.

There's a Party at Your House, part 4.

You can go to what remains of your kitchen and take double shots of whatever cheap alcohol remains. You can go upstairs where the music is quieter and join in a discussion about politics and philosophy, of which you are neither interested nor knowledgeable. You can drink a warm beer with vodka in it and play card games which seem to have no rules but where everyone ends up in their underwear or less.

You can stick your head inappropriately in the way of other people’s photographs until they take proper ones of you with your pose ready.

You can try and get a game of spin the bottle started because you haven’t pulled anyone for ages and you feel like you need to, because everyone is hot. Especially the crazy naked girls from the previous card game.

You can draw on people with a marker pen; moustaches, eyebrows, lions.

You can head downstairs to what was your living room and dance like you’re on speed, even though you’re not. You can wear someone else’s jester’s hat and wave your arms in the air too enthusiastically which hurts your elbows and wrists. Your joints go snap, crackle and pop.

You can have some girl from one of your classes come up to you and insult you. You’re not sure why. So you can go upstairs again, past the giant movie posters taken from the Odeon. A cardboard cut out of the Predator leers at you. It might just be you, but the mandibles are definitely twitching. The tape that fastens it to the wall can snap, and it falls on you, tete a tete. Your heart leaps as you fall to the ground, face first, palms flat on the carpet. Your breathing is shallow and quick and you can feel your pulse in your mouth. You think that you can taste blood in your mouth but it’s just the adrenaline.

There's a Party at Your House, part 3.

You can fall back against the lawnmower as a blow strikes you in the side of the face. Struggling to right yourself and pull up your jeans, you stumble again onto dusty unidentified shed clutter. You’re pulled up by the scruff of your jacket whilst a girl screams in the background. The music is still thumping out of the living room. You wonder how the police have not been called as you’re beaten down onto the cold concrete. All you can taste is blood and dust.

You gently pull up your trousers. The light from the party is shining into your hideout. You can see a rake. You leap up towards it, grab it, and swing. For a moment, you think you hit the girl, but she’s just on the floor crying hysterically because the guy is out cold in a crimson splatter.

You can think that you should really be getting out of here. You can grab your headphones from the floor, and leap over the back garden wall.

You can pause to check if you’re being followed. No one is even looking at you. The door is open but people aren’t spilling out with their mouths open, pointing at you incredulously.

You can see an unconscious girl wearing very little laid out on your carpet, her shiny brown hair covering her face.

You can decide that it’s time to get out of here before the guy wakes up, and to hell with the rest. It isn’t your party.

You can run off down the road and not stop until you reach the 24-Hour Tesco where you can buy sweets and batteries and a bottle of orange Lucozade and spend the rest of the freezing night watching your breath steam around your face, cocooned in metal.

Or.

There's a Party at Your House, part 2.

You have a choice.

You can go into the shed with the electric heater and a warm beer and spend the night listening to your MP3 player on repeat, wrapped in a duvet on a moth-eaten deckchair, alone.

You can hear the party, but only see a spider’s web, thick and heavy with dust. You stare at it, trying to guess what time it will be when you next look at your watch. 27 minutes past? At 32 minutes past, your batteries give out. At 11 stones of loser past, you jerk upwards as the hinges of your fortress begin to creak. The door shakes, rattles and moans. 43 minutes past. You step towards the door and peer out of the crack by the hinges. You crane your neck but can only see the hunched shoulder of a guy wearing a red t-shirt. Dust rains down on you each time he thrusts at the girl and she whimpers but you can’t see her face. The guy turns his head and you can see him grimacing.

Step back from the door, what if he can see you? You can’t get out; you can’t let anyone know that you’re so much of a loser that you’re hiding in a shed at a party being held in your own house!

You can feel trapped in the dark, the wood still creaking and the gasps and grunts getting louder. You back away into the depth, but you can feel something crawling on your neck. You jump forwards. You can feel insects crawling all over you, under your jumper, on your face, the millions of tiny legs tickling and squirming inside your socks.

You pause, still tingling, rubbing your hands over your arms, squashing all of the bugs. Then you can feel something stirring, and this time it’s not a rogue insect.

You can stand in the shed, head tilted back, with your jeans around your knees, listening, working. You shed your jacket and roll up your jumper sleeves. A vein begins to stand up on your forearm.

You can choose to ignore the murmured speech outside as the creaking stops and the opening of the latch. The moment of climax has arrived, but you can only stare dumbly into the two pairs of eyes for seconds after seconds, no one knowing what to do.

It’s all on you. And him, the other guy, it’s on his knee a bit too. At least he managed to pull up his trousers, you haven’t, though his flies are undone. The cold from outside swoops in and chills your skin, but the heat is still rising in your neck. Your heart can pound all it wants but it will never break through your ribs and your stomach will never fall far enough to save you from this. All the clichés in the world can’t save you form this.

There's a Party at Your House, part 1.

Someone must have broken the window from the inside, the shattered glass lies delicately frosted on the concrete outside your house.

You stand and watch the red lights of the cab drive away from your front gate, leaving you unprepared for the party you didn’t even know was happening. Not only is it two in the morning, but you’re hardly dressed for the occasion either. You’re still in your work shirt and have got blackcurrant cordial and sambuca splashed down your jeans. But you smell like them. You smell of alcohol and a little bit of vomit, both sour.

The front door is open. Not wide open, but ajar enough for the music to seep out. Rave music, or house music, or trance music. It eats away at your ears as soon as you hear it properly, bite by bite by bite from the living room with each thump from the bass speaker.

The light shades in the hallway and living room have been covered with newspaper so everything is several shades darker, and someone pushes past you and knocks it with their outstretched hand, so everyone’s shadows jump and leer at you.

The sofas in the living room have been pushed back and the TV has been covered with a blanket. The air is thick with the smell of cigarettes. Dog ends overflow from an empty tin of chopped tomatoes. You bend over to pick it up and notice that a dried crimson scum is still congealed around the top.

There is a dark, ambiguous stain on the grey carpet and someone wretches into a bucket.

Everyone is attached in twos or threes, grinding to the music, arms slung around each other’s necks, synchronised.

Empty bottles of alcohol are lined militarily up on window sills, the labels facing dead straight. Empty cans litter the floor where a pyramid fell.

You feel separated from everyone, because you’re not drunk and because you are alone. No one comes near you, no one is greeting you. Nobody has missed you and the party is alive without you. It hits you that you are not important and that the size of the moon outside is bigger than any of this. You are so insignificant.

Task 30

I saw you in here, all the time, alone.
Sometimes I was alone too, or with friends.
Eye contact lingered; the seeds had been sown.
The isolation this romance all mends.
But now you're here with this other girl.
You're smiling and she's smiling, but I frown
As all my notions rapidly unfurl;
What I thought was true is flipped upside down.

But whatever, I don't care, your moustache
Looks like it's been drawn on with crayons and
I hope she gives you some foul itching rash
When you take her tenderly by the hand.
I wanted someone lonely just like me
To pat me on the head, say I'm pretty.

Fingers, part 2.

It’s a natural mutation, he said. Shit happens, nature can be cruel. It’s part of what makes me unique, and now I don’t even notice it.

Do you notice it yet? Shine your torch a little to the left. It’s on a sheet of last week’s sport with the cheap gold band still gripping to the ragged sinews. The nail is perhaps protruding as the cuticle peels back.

Don’t look so horrified, I told you- you’re late.

Uniqueness? I said to him that it had to go.

He laughed until I got out the chisel.

I made him put his left hand flat against the table top, then bam.

He collapsed on the floorboards howling. In pain, not forgiveness. He should have been thanking me for setting him free.

You’ll find him in the corner, the chisel still in place. No finger prints on it, mind, I remembered the latex gloves. Watch out for those nice shoes, blood stains you know.

Yeah, you can see him now.

Don’t rush, you might startle him. Steady, steady.You look onto the pale skin, vulnerable and soft. The scruff of black hair, matting slightly around his sticky crimson ears. His eyes, so blue, so soft. You could probably fall in love with him, that’d be a story to tell wouldn’t it?

I tossed him aside, nothing more than a big meaty rag doll. I told you, it’s your fault. You’re late.

Why don’t you count his fingers, curled into fists at his chest?

This is where you can write ‘motive’ in your note book. That’s right, he still has ten. The sixth on the left never really belonged to him. But, and this is the only thing we have in common, I was too late to save him too.

Fingers, part 1.

You're later than I expected.

Marching in, in those clicking heels and that sharp jacket, like you own the place. But you’re too nicely dressed for a sergeant, you should be right up there at the top, I’m not joking. Has anyone ever told you that you could be a model? Seriously, you’ve got the cheekbones. And the thighs, I bet.

But whatever, you’re late to my party.

Come on in anyway. This is the hall, but hang on to your jacket. I know it’s dark but I had to knock out the electrics, and it’s nice and cosy now, especially in a big old loft like this. Daddy’s pride and joy gone all art school boho cool? I don’t buy into it either, just a drop out and a coke head. I did the whole family a favour. When you go around the corner, the impact of the place will really hit you. Mostly, it’ll be the smell. A tissue over your face, you’ll want to tread carefully, with the bleach I threw everywhere eating at the membranes of your nose. Yum yum.

The blood smelt so sickly and so sweet that I had to do something to cover the stench.

It’s still dark so you can only vaguely make out the piles of books and tubes of acrylics and a few sheets of old newspaper. Dust is swirling in the shafts of light from where I broke the window. Obviously not much of a cleaner.

My Mouth

My mouth is a washing machine that is leaking again.
The inner cogs and machinations are all turning,
But out of sync and at their own free will and
Froth and scum is pouring out

And it goes on and on and on, I can't stop
The churning, the creation
Of the inconvenient waterfall, the cascades
Of humiliation, the torrents of my speech.

"The old girl has finally snapped,"
They mutter, a hand on my shaking shoulder,
And then I'm taken away
To sit in a quiet corner.