Twisted Towers
Unfinished
Second Draft
Twisted Towers
Yellow Bells
Every few days we need more. So we call, we hope, and we wait. For the signal bleeders, pulse jackers, muse merchants, the dream stitchers. To deliver a promise, deliver a future. Not to escape, but to return. To a time when we had a future, a human hope. The waiting is the hardest.
In the orange light of an amber alcove I wait, in a hidden hole in an alley down the broken streets of the twisted city.
“Where is it? When, how long, I need this.”
In this city. They take and you’re not allowed; it’s up to you. You are responsible but you’re not responsible. You’re wrong, be like us, we know the way, we guarantee, ten ways to succeed in… success is everything. We’ll be worlds away soon- full of that feeling. Of possibility, like it doesn’t matter, because it’s already now and here is all that matters.
Where is it, how long, they’re taking so long, he’s going to be late- silence. You promised, I need this, there’s nothing else.
Constant rain falls around the rails. Follows the white rails till it swells at a dip, too heavy to hold itself together, falls into the alley. No end. Just the orange of the light in the alcove through the flat grey clouds around the twisted towers in the stink of the city.
Swishing people all over the ground outside but I can’t see him, his wide hat and red backpack. How long? There’s nothing else.
“Stay calm, just try stay calm, he’ll come, he said he would. Soon we’ll be there. He’ll bring the hope turn us alive inside again with the purpose. Not escaping, returning.
Two people, a couple, moving through the rain, half hidden under the yellow bell of the wet umbrella. It’s not them. My legs won’t stop wanting to move under my body, thoughts bumper to bumper, separate from the system that’s driven me here in the orange light, in the amber alcove, the amber tinge of old televisions in the hothouse outskirts of the disappearing day under the twisted towers in the morning rain, in the stinking city, the pink noise of the monorail and the cars and the swishing people and the dripping rain. Waiting. The waiting is the worst.
If it had been different, if only I’d been shown how, but we’ve been blinded for direction uploaded by people in a wasted vacuum. When they get here. When the bough breaks the feeling will fall. We’ll be standing there in the open field, children again.
“Bad news. He’s not coming.”
Two Clowns
Unfinished
Second Draft
Now that I’m gone it’s much easier to understand. Indeed it is only now possible for me to explain what happened from this new position of abstraction that now enables an explanation.
It all seems a pinprick of light in a sky of dark clouds at night. Condensed memories sifted and ordered, only available from this new position – the passing of life.
I’ve left the pain there, where it was made. Now someone else’s pain. I am outside the equation. I don’t possess the words, only the details. A burden not taken but realised.
Without form now, no vessel to control. No need to ponder. Released into oblivion adjacent in these words. And apart from love, that’s all that is left here now.
Can you see the lights above the clouds in the black sky?
Lightning storm outside the empty circus tent. Flaps of thick striped plastic canvas flung on a hinge by the wind in the rain. Mould smelling horse shit and wet little lakes running in under one side. Roaring waves of rain assault the outside and dripping to the ground within.
You can’t take a circus tent down in a thunderstorm – or you shouldn’t. It was fine when we put it up. In a town like this it’s up for at least ten days, shows twice a day, until our run was exhausted. But this rain wasn’t expected, the relentless rain in sheets.
It wasn’t cold but the air was thick. The ground outside washed away over the surface. I found a high spot on a pile of damp hay and went to sleep. So many shows, so much rain. The grey grew deep in the sky outside and the light grew thin in the heavy tent. Lashed with storms under the relentless swathes of rain. That sound on the tent like the flapping of a tattered flag.
I guess it was sleep, what else could it be? Then I awoke in that dream to the deadened voices smudged in the stale air. The wind was gone but had left its passengers. In the dark it was difficult to tell if they were in or out, rubbing on the squeaky remnant of the wind.
One asked the other, and the other asked back. But there was another voice sliding in between. The words were there but only slid over the top, colourless and light, not here or there, but across and through. Twitching rope.
That’s assault – I wouldn’t call it that
You’ll bathe in it’s blood till you’re clean – That’s a bit melodramatic
What if it was you it happened to? – I can imagine
But you’re not even one of us – So now I’m an outsider?
No, you just don’t have the ability to understand the situation- So I lack empathy.
It takes more than empathy – But I can imagine it happening to me
Oh, so they came to your house with their threats and their laws and their recorders. What would you do?
I’d tell them what they want to hear – So you would lie
It’s not a lie if it protects what I value – A lie is a lie
And the truth is the truth – Truth, well that’s relative
Relative to the situation – That is what I’m saying
Truth is better than what you did – I stood up for what I believed in
With violence – I wouldn’t call it that
So if you believe in something it is true? – It is true
Even if it’s not? – How do you know it’s not true?
I can imagine – You don’t have the ability to imagine that truth
I woke and heard these two talking. They thought I was asleep.
Let’s wake him – You know we can’t do that
But it will save him the trouble of… – I know but it’s not up to us
So what do we do? – We have to wait for the rain to stop
We can’t take the tent down yet, we can’t stop the rain, we can’t…
Well what can we do?
I stretched my arm out and propped myself up. The two painted faces looked at me in surprise and with a jolt I woke to the curtain beside this bed, twitching against the early light of another Saturday morning. The breeze had picked up during the night, and the rain was gone, and my head was a fat, dumb, floss-ball of last nights’ party I went to the mirror. The makeup was smudged across my face like dry chalk on concrete after a downpour. I laughed/ sniggered at what was left of the clown in the mirror. He just raised his eyebrows –
So… Into which dream will you awake?
It seems now a pinprick of light in the dark sky of night. The wind flapping thick slaps of striped plastic like a tattered flag on the wet outside of the tent, twitching the loose ropes on the inside, the bent smell of last nights’ horse shit and little rivers running from outside under the tent walls, it wasn’t cold, but the air was thick in the thin light of the dusk outside.
I found a high place of broken straw and went to sleep.
I guess it was sleep, until smudged voices, two, maybe three, lifted my lids to figures moving just enough to see. The wind had gone without its’ passengers, and their painted faces squeaked in the soggy air of the wet tent in the thin light the dream had left behind.
Let’s wake him – You know we can’t do that
But it will save him the trouble of… – I know but it’s not up to us
So what do we do? – We have to wait for the rain to stop
We can’t take the tent down yet, we can’t stop the rain, we can’t…
Well what can we do?
I stretched my arm out and propped myself up. The two painted faces looked at me in surprise and with a jolt I woke to the curtain in the trailer, twitching against the cheap early window light of another Saturday morning. The breeze had picked up during the night and the rain was gone, and my head was a fat, dumb, floss-ball of last nights’ show. In the mirror makeup smudged across my face like street chalk on concrete under the rain. I laughed/ sniggered at what was left of the makeup in the mirror. He just raised my eyebrows –
“So… Into which dream will you wake?”
Now that I’m gone it’s much easier to understand. I’ve left the pain there, where it was made. Now someone else’s pain. Now it is yours. I am outside the equation. I don’t possess the words, only the details. A burden not taken but realised.
Without form now, no vessel to control. No need to ponder. Released into oblivion adjacent in these words. And apart from love, they are all that is left here now.
Can you see the lights above the clouds in the black sky?