Sunday Morning

Distracted by church bells chiming outside, bored while masturbating in bed, his mind was flitting about: Jolie nipples peanuts, brown rose yellow, chinks chicks chickens, farms horses whips, whispers MrWhippy MadamSpanky,

- this is ridiculous. Give it a rest, I told him, enough is enough.

- stop complaining, Fist, answered his Will.

In hushed tones, his Imagination and Memory were huddled together, colluding in a dark corner of his head. Then in chorus they sang to his Soul, slyly:

- those ex's loved a good spanking. Didn't they? Bent over the table or bed, pretending to be school girls. Perhaps there was something in that, Mr Teacher. Maybe a little spanking will expel this daydreaming, pass you through the pain barrier and into pleasure. Go on, Mr Fist, spank!

The idea runs around his body. Sirens of clichés sing about experience, and never knowing unless you try. Curiosity affirms his ass is not a cat, and so cannot be killed by this. The left fist complains (in demotic French) about having to depart his comfy corner, perched upon the warm cave of his anus. His butt stays silent, but wobbles up and down, perhaps in a nodding motion. The lungs breathe out a resigned sigh, while cumming spanked women are hung like a picture on the inside of each eye,

- and so, a conspiracy is born. The torso twists him prone. The knees lift him up like an eager dog. The face assumes a look of innocent excitement, like an expectant child.

And then, the brain tells the arm: Action! And up I go, like a mad kid on the end of a fairground ride, or a huge weight on the end of a crane, or a child's kite waiting to collapse, all the way up there. Taut and straight, open palm-position like a kung fu cliché, up I go.

And then I am flying down through the still bedroom air, hurtling through the warm haze of the morning, dive-bombing down, down, down, dropping like a piano through the sky in a cartoon, until -

SLAM. Spank. Smack...

And then, shudder. Shuddering, along his juddering frame, from the waist and up to the face. And then, the burning. O the burning, burning, burning. First, burning the ass, hot and red and throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. And soon the eyes, all optimism gone, them on the verge of spitting out their bitter salts, crying, wailing, sobbing.

"What was that noise? You ok in there?" housemate 1 called through the bedroom wall.

"Ahh, I..." is all the agonized mouth could muster.

"No don't go through," said housemate 2. Then quietly: "I think he's -"

Silence. Enough time for a simple gesture?

"O," said housemate number 1. "O."

His face is on fire. His ass is agony. He is populated with pain. Except for I, Fist. In the shocked fleeting silence, I raise my solitary central finger. Here endeth the lesson, I preach, here endeth the lesson.

Fate and Fist

The gut swaying, the eyes blearing, the mouth muttering, the legs tottering, the arms swinging, the soul lost - he will be wandering around the city late tonight.

Spitting at the sky, choking the air, tearing along the streets, growling at houses, no soul to begin with - the cars will fart, crap, creep and speed around the city late tonight.

Surely fate is at hand to power such a beast into him, as he meanders across a road. And then the coma; his gut will shrivel, his eyes go blind, that mouth shut-up, the arms sliced off, the legs frozen forever - everything except his fist crippled.

And in time, he, the cripple, will be given a wheelchair. And I, fist, will captain that ship; and the streets will treat him differently. No longer will the sirens sing sweetly. No longer will the pubs welcome with open arms. Instead, fingers will point at his pathetic body, mouths will laugh at the mucus drifting down his chin, and drivers will share in-jokes behind their windows.

And I, fist, as was fated, will then deliver him from the miserable city, driving him forever forward, onward, upward. Or at least, I will speed him away, steer him elsewhere.

The Right Fist

Scented with cigarettes, perfumed with puke, with a nose of throat cancer, notes of pollution and bile, and a body of rotting crisps, I have just caught a sneeze - and with it, the stench of his innards. Smearing itself into a pocket, seeping into the life-lines and the love-lines of the palm, sliming around in my fingers, knuckling down under the nails - on the stench lingers, on and on and on.

Normally, the left fist stops such sneezes. The lazy left fist! Who never picks up a pen to write, never is called on in the lonely hours, as the night grows dark and late, is allergic to wrist-watches, and never bothers to shake a hand or flag a cab... And why not today? The lazy left fist is on strike, lounging around in his buttcrack, fiddling with hairballs, and savouring the smell down there instead.

(I think the left Fist is French, btw.)

Otis

5,
8,
6,
5,
5,
5,

3, 2, 1 - and when it finally reaches the ground, I am ready to fill whatever face emerges with fist, ready to reach inside the brain of whomever has wasted my waiting time, and turn-off the light of their soul like a switch, ready to pluck out the eyes and fist through the throat, ready to ram the chin to the back of their head - ready, ready, ready, 3, 2, 1 -

- and the elevator is empty. What to throw a fist at now, Fist? The invisible man, that eternal companion conjured beside you, lame, nameless, naked, unknown? Or, the unsmiling man, his fat ugly features caught in the lift mirror, him with a flimsy fist flopped at his side, hurrying back to the office without good reason?

Snow II

So, man-in-the-moon! You're not bored of puking yet? And still on you puke, same as yesterday, puking your own ejaculate up - everyone knows the moon is made of ejaculate - made wholly of his own ejaculate in fact - and so just now you've puked it down into the clouds again, and so down it snows, your spacedust, spraying itself over the city, squirting up against the windows, sloshing along the streets. Proud of your city-soaking cum, Mister man-in-the-moon?

Pah, your snow is not so special. How many times have I found myself shuffling up and down his best-buddy late at night, the lights off, stood against the attic window, staring over the rooftops and offices and parks and churches? Over the schools and hospitals and cemeteries? The roads and museums, riches and rapes, murders and marvels? The skyscrapers and sewers?

And suddenly, it all disintegrates: the city is coated in white as if under a flash of lightening, his feeble friend is sagging, like the chubby chins of the elderly (but a lot smaller), and his face has lost interest in reflections. And I fist am unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, dryer and harder than the moon.

Snow

A plump little cloud, sat in the sky like a pillow, has been plucked of its feathers: slowly down the soft down scatters.

Eyed from the window of the office, this little corner of the city is poised for transformation in an instant, like a garden at the change of season. Suddenly to be made of shape and sparkles, simple and pure under arctic white, poised it waits for transformation.

Look, brag the eyes, Look. See how the city is just a pretty snowshaker, sat upon the mantlepiece of the mind, ever-prepared for a sleepy flurry when shook by the obedient fist.

No, answer I, fist, No. The city is just another fist, rammed through the guts of the earth, ever-assaulted by the sleepy, blind and bleeding sky. But with fingers, no matter how cold, flicked out always.

Break

Paper work this, paper work that, type type type type type, then a knock at the door. And the only break is the toilet: the streaming heat of urine between finger and thumb, like a line of bullets fired from a machine gun.

And the clear bright porcelain, could you not be the face of my boss, or the trousers of those typing out admin messages elsewhere? No: all you hold is a chewed up piece of their discarded gum, or a pube shaped like a question mark.

But all the wretched worries and violent queries of work are soon to be done. Now is the weekend, where the city out there will flood in here, with cheap fluids of regular beer; flood his frame and his fist, until all goes silent, and dark, with a thud.

City from the Rooftop

Intricate as the grids on the back of your fist, the rooftops of the city: long lines of red brick, lattices of slate, a jutting chimney like a finger or cigarette, the anorexic arms of trees dotted about like thin hairs, here and there, and amongst the roofs covering offices like a trusted glove, you once or twice make out the thin grey strip of a road - like an indented little line, left by an old scar.

Staring over the fractured lines of the city, you finish your cigarette, peer over the edge. There are the looping acrobatics of the air, chasing this way and that, darting then circling back, straying and playing amongst the buildings as they like, as if a kid's fists exploring bric-a-brac.

You could join them in a step or two - but nothing in the city would catch you. Instead, the thin path back to the door, from the edge of which streaks the light of the warm corridor... back to the office, throbbing with electricity, which your fingers use to grope out to elsewhere. Say to you.

Baby Stories

Not for him:

Kicking, shouting, screaming, groping, smattered in blood, ripped from the cave of the womb, and blurted out into a bright, cold, controlled hospital room. He was born asleep. Had a snooze instead.

Not for him:

Crawling around the furniture like an assault course, creeping up to the edge of the sofa like a cliff. He didn't move for a year. Just sat like a fat little Buddha, contemplating the world, with a sphere of toys.

For him:

On his first birthday, he got up and walked. And then started to talk. Before then, I had patted at dark, red, wet, reverberating walls, or flopped feebly about like a stuffed creature on a carpet. But then - as he groped forward greedily, lurched about looking for love, wailed words of want in the air - I knew his baby-soul was mine; fist's, forever fighting, forever forcing - but flying.

Popcorn!

This time, he will say it:

“Daniel, my encouraging manager, my occasional friend over after-work drinks, Mister nice guy of the Department; Daniel with your boiling-lobster sweaty features, your tiny, feeble pale Irish frame; Daniel, jokester with the worst jokes, who on Friday forwards dumb emails that are ten years old, comes into our offices to nod as we falsely laugh, I have decided for once to tell you The Truth.

“This morning, yesterday morning, mornings for months now, I have awoken with one dream: that I have murdered you. Not a nightmare, note, but a dream. Not accidentally killed, note, but deliberately murdered. And I have to confess – I have enjoyed filling your face with my fist. Yes, that’s right, my fist. Yes, the one I’m raising boldly now in front of your balmy features. This fist, your face.

“One thing remarkable about this thoroughly enjoyable dream – and yes, I realise that my appraisals don’t normal cover such personal matters, but bear with me, because boy is this going somewhere – where was I? One thing remarkable about this thoroughly enjoyable dream is that the inside of your face isn’t actually made of the normal stuff of man. Yes, there’s blood. Yes, a bit of brain, bumping around like reddened blotting paper. But basically, the innards of your face don’t have tendons, or bones, or a soul, or teeth – they’re made of jelly.

“Jelly! And I just love squirming my fingers around in jelly. I have destroyed you so many times, just like a child fisting around a bowl of jelly at a birthday party. Well, not ‘just like’ – because this is actually homicide. And also, I don’t actually get to eat the jelly – just rummage around in it, and then from the inside knock your few remaining hairs from your skull. But I do get to toss the remains of your jelly onto the carpet and tread you into no more than stain.

“You see – don’t look so worried, no-one’s going to burst in or something. Your door is quite locked and the sign, after all, firmly says Do Not Disturb – and I’d hate for all this to be disturbed – where was I? Ahh yes. I was mushing you into a carpet like jelly. Daniel – my wonderfully encouraging manager – please don’t look so worried; this story is only half-done, and there’s a great deal more to come!

“Jelly for starters. You see, in this thoroughly enjoyable dream – no, I won’t lower my fist, I like it where it is, you see – and stop interrupting my flow – this is about me – my Personal Appraisal – mine – please, Shut Up! – yes, anyway. Good. In this thoroughly enjoyable dream, there is one disappointment. Yes, you guessed it. Did you? I don’t know, you’re so dull – possibly not. But when you hear the one disappointment, you’ll instantly recognize its truth.

“The disappointment is that it’s only a dream after all. Simple, eh? Each morning, I do not actually manage to snuff out the light of your unique essence. I wake to an alarm – and dammit, I have to come in to work and talk with you. Talk with you... So, I come in. And there you are, alive and unscathed. Your ugly features intact, grinning at me like a monkey. Like a jelly monkey. Like the face of an ugly monkey set in cheap jelly. And the sight each morning makes me want to puke shit out of my eyes.

“Or rather, it makes me want the dream to be real. For a fist to really have entered your face, thumped through the roof of your mouth, prodded out your eyes from the inside, and squished your brain – ‘brain’ – into mush. And then for you to casually collapse on the carpet, your eternal soul gone from the universe for ever, under the cheap second sole of my black-leather shoe.

“And that is the disappointment every single day – that you – no, I won’t sit down. I’ll say it twice if you like – but I won’t sit down. The crushing disappointment. That you are still alive. And each night, I ask the gods to answer my dreams and convert your life force into a job for the cleaners. Where was I?

“Ahh yes – you get the picture now. I jubilantly dream of your death every night – and wake disappointed. I can see a look of worry across your face – no need to move your chair back, or nervously grab that hole-punch like it’s a shield – I am really so much bigger than you. (Do you know we all call you Downsize Danny?) Anyway, my occasional friend, I imagine you are asking yourself a pretty simple question right now.

“And that question is: What the blazes has all this to do with a Personal Appraisal? No – you’re shaking your head – something else bothering you? Well, come come. Speak.

“You don’t seem able to speak. Well, this little speech of mine really rather depended on you asking me now: ‘What’s this got to do with your Personal Appraisal?’ Can’t you play along, Mister Nice Guy? And please, stop jumping when I take a step in your direction. You look scared, or something.

“Wait a minute – if I tower above you – will you ask the question now? What if I – yes – I thought the throat-grip would force it out of you. What’s this got to do with your Personal Appraisal. Good question, Danny, gargled admittedly but a really good question for a midget monkey like you! Just a little joke, just a little joke. Midget – yes. Monkey – no. More like a mollusc!

“O I make myself laugh. O, chill out, Downside Dumbass, please. You just asked a really good question just then. What’s this got do with my personal appraisal? I like good questions. And that’s your first. Well done. I Appraise that you are Improving. Your current conclusion about me is probably a bit different – but it won’t matter one iota in two moments. Trust me, Dorkass, on that at least.

“So. The crunch. The big kahuna. The mother of mothers. The final fist. What on earth has this: my wish to send all the moments of your beautiful individuality into the ultimate recycle bin, got to do with this: my Personal Appraisal? You look mortified! Stop shaking; your furry, sweaty ears will hear better then.

“Actually, let me answer your question falsely for a few moments – before I answer with The Truth. I’ll tell you a few lies, in case you get confused and doubt me. I’d hate that. I’ll tell you a few things about What All This Doesn’t Mean.

“First of all – and I thought these dreams meant this for a while – all this doesn’t mean I want a temp. And by temp, I mean ditzy 20-something to do my filing. And by ditzy 20-something, I mean a stupid, beautiful woman. And by steautiful woman, I mean an immigrant with a dodgy work permit. And by that, I mean someone whom I can say: give me a blowjob and work late and do all my work – or I’ll phone up the Passport Office. Under the table, now. (She’d need rudimentary English, incidentally.)

“Anyway. Why don’t I mean that? I am not so soulless as to employ a whore! Or rather, someone who I fuck however I want, whenever I want – the way you employ you me. Ok, you don’t. But sometimes I feel like you do – and that’s enough for me to make a mirror for the moment.

“Okay, first possibility crossed off the list. See, we’re getting somewhere, aren’t we? Secondly – I’m not asking for time off for stress. I wouldn’t mind it, but a holiday of false hope? I could not lie to myself. Like my dreams don’t lie. Like my dream that you by my fist are to die. Oop – best not skip ahead like that! You like your bullet points nice and orderly, I know, I know, I know so very damn well.

“Third possibility – which isn’t true. Let me reiterate: these are all implications that what I’ve said don’t actually mean. Just for your sense of – Chi? Calm? Ikea? Ichia? Tai Chi? Chai Tea? Feng shui? Whatever totems of Eastern chillage chit you do buy in bulk into. Well whatever – chill, you. I don’t actually mean to kill you. Not this exact moment. Well, you never know. Sometimes you tell yourself such things – falling asleep, calmly – and then – say – well, nevermind! You see, the thing is, I don’t much care for jelly. I’d rather not have it on my fists at all, really. Deep down. I think. Here’s the story.

“When I was four years old (and, by the by, here’s a chance for you to use some empathy, because that’s your approximate mental age) I had a birthday party organized for me by the strangers I knew then as parents – mum and dad. And I ate all the jelly before the guests arrived – where are the stupid infants now? probably in leather chairs much like yours – and after eating it, I rapidly puke and shat myself. And missed the party. Picture it - my first memory.

“Daniel, you look pale! More like clams than lobster. Well, lobster is always such a grand fish. Usually eaten as a whole. Probably because it’s a hassle for chefs to flesh out the meat in pieces – unlike little molluscs. I do like eating little molluscs. They’re a dying species, apparently: so eat them while you can. They’ll be gone soon – like you! On a geographical timescale, I mean. O I make myself laugh.

“Where was I? Ahh yes. I don’t much like jelly. As I was saying. My little vignette. I don’t much like vinegar, incidentally. Prefer my food raw. Or with a little butter. Anyway, carrying on, going on, like a foolish moron amongst filing – not even pausing to masturbate in the loneliness – I don’t much like filing. Or jelly.

“Incidentally – I really appreciate how quiet and uninterrupting you are now. Because – let’s be honest – you like to interrupt don’t you? You hear a jokey chat in my office from your office, give it a couple of minutes, and interrupt the whole thing with a query about a question in an email – any email – don’t you? Yes, you do. Break up the party, as harmless as a four year olds birthday party. But this is not a real grievance – because I really can’t stand the people whom love me for my office wit any more than you, and your praise for my efficiency. (I hide the filing I can’t be bothered to do, incidentally.)

“There I am. Prolonging my conclusioning again. I fear I have gotten all confusing. My third point is: I don’t think I’m going to kill you.

“(Right now.) And why aren’t I going to kill you?

“(Probably.) Because I don’t like jelly. So what is my conclusion? Ahh, if only you hadn’t lost the power of speech! Still, the dark patch spreading from your groin is eloquent enough.

“Because all I want, in answer to this Personal Appraisal and the other issues discussed – well, you’ve been pleasingly and unusually quiet, but ‘discussed’ will do – because all I want from you is popcorn. Yes, popcorn. I want to sit behind my desk and watch the morons move past like movies. That level of indifference I want – and I want for you no more than a prop. A prop of popcorn. That’s all.

“How about it? Think it over. I should also say – I want raw propcon. Not the packaged stuff. So if the mood ever takes me, I can swallow the little fists of corn whole, heat myself up, and then have my stomach explode outward over the open-plan. Maybe I just want the ultimate deterrent to always be there – or maybe one day I actually do it, because who really knows? Anyway: I want the choice, to blurt my entirety out in the form of a million exploding fists, from my centre to my feet to my face.

“I’ll leave you to think about it. In the meantime – the database is ticking along nicely. The adverts for the next two events are already all ready. I’m a little behind on the pack – but I think you will forgive me for that? Silence equals consent. See you in a bit. Or in a dream. Anyway – time for me to get back to the invisible internet.”

IT Spies

Tell me, Danny (fat lumbering stupid instrumental one) and Andy (strict boss ready to say no like a gun) do you spy on me and my IP? Down in your basement of worry and monitors, does up pop my little screen, and you gravely say that Fist’s away again venting his spleen? (O, but that is not what I ever mean.) Whispering to my manager, want to sack Fist? Just say – we can do the rest. Laughing at the little keythumps of mine, nosing around my naughty favourite links?

So be it. But remember, cowered in your motley gang in the pub after work, grumbling away about time lost and risky sites, and those who dare to cut away from a Good Use code, I am not paycheques or contracts or signatures or responsibility or clocked-times or politetudes, and while I may only be as free as a fist - I am still a fist.

Valentine’s Fist

World that would love me: Bring me fist fights in the front-gardens, brains exploding like bright red roses. Bring me knuckles as brilliant as buttercups, pumped with the ecstasy of illegal drugs. Bring me shivers of orgasm along my fine hairs, like a sudden bluebell bed amidst dark forest floors. Bring me blood, violently along a vein, as violet as an iris. Bring me kisses as innocent as a drop of water, hinting of honey, weeping from the lip of an orchid.

The sugar of chocolates will do for other fat bodies, and an over-priced average meal makes a statement – but not for me. If dare you come, best of all, bring me the buds, curled up as tight as fists, yet to be known as flowers. Unaware they will unfold into the coming summer sun, undone by the laws of nature, or by an other.

Saturday Morning

And so the city sits. Waiting for its evening, the drugs dotting around different fists; a fistful of dollars here, a bin full of condoms there; already somewhere, the vomiting down the side of the stairs, to the sound of 60s guitars booming from a neighbour; already the waking to the sight of yawning or grinning stranger, their ejaculate or blood drying in a duvet, or smeared down the side of a bed; sex dotting the city the way starlight should; drugs crawling over the city like a vortex of ants in the vicinity of frothing drains; and a million-and-one pleasured, or to-be-pleasured, human brains.

And so this is youth. Fingers in soggy pies, glitter in cherubic eyes. Love, shouting from a loud speaker. Hope, in every hello like a silent order. Libido, poised like a mechanical spring, waiting only to be sprung. The newspapers line the local shop like souvenirs of totems, relics of a political tribe whose clichés echo around the dinner parties to this day, somehow. And the TV or radio frequencies carry on, only a remote click away, their faint communes of football experts, or poetry knowers, or therapy speakers, or ravers or rebels or, or, or, or or or or or

It says nothing to the dull, quiet men in chess clubs, shrugging their shoulders at bright buildings, proud names. It says nothing to women knitting shawls in pre-war cottages. It says nothing to mothers in suburbs, wondering when the next phone call from their daughter or son, full with clichés of friends and careers, will come. To the old churches, where men kneel to weep at a looming virgin, it says: open up your ancient books to close down this whole new world.

Saturday at eleven, and the city stirs for shops and brunch. Like cigarettes, the fire and smoke of clichés are ready in bright, round eyes. A shivery fist in youth tidies a rented room, waiting for evening, or the internet on Monday morning.

Fist in the Sky

Perhaps it is the same, in London and Paris and Berlin, as it is in New York or LA or Toronto, or Moscow and Sydney and Tokyo, Beijing or Jerusalem or Warsaw, Baghdad and Bogotá and Buenos Aires, or Babylon or Atlantis or Hades. For Andromeda and Queen Cassiopeia, the Compass and the Pole Star, Orion the Hunter and the Northern Crown, Pegasus and the Southern Cross, the Crane and the Great Bear, the bright one here and that wispy line there and the darting magic one just gone - perhaps it is the same.

Starlight, that once darted half the universe to dance upon our little eyes, finds above the city a shroud of soot, cloud and mist flecked with fists of dark dirt - and there instead it dies. There amidst the vast Great Fist, a constellation of our own that out-fists the sturdy ancients of the sky.

He believes the rumours, that still starlight reaches remote spots, where there is no city yet, as durable as ever, if only we could see it. The vast sands of Africa and the frozen wastelands of the poles: where underfoot, whether boiling or freezing, are deserts as friendly to man as a fist. Whether flying Great Fist or not.

Train

Not for her:

Fists of years sweating in factories, rising before the sun and ten hours of labour, the fuel for a night-life of cocaine, with baseball bats running over city roofs; not for her, staring into the Career Advisor's eyes like they held hell-fire, as he mouthed the advice of a mini-Hitler, and you tell yourself you'd rather fist yourself forever; not for her, study going up in drink and smoke, or fingers tearing at the nylon pin-stripe, or flying from the family norms and the fool advice, no not for her.

For her instead:

Birth, suburbs, study, city, hubby, baby, suburbs, death. And now my standard, fresh-faced city financial pro, always so quiet and good and neat and tidy, and doing what everyone says you should - all that you know - I have news: you've made a mistake. Your new i-pod (I imagine you would never have been seen with a walkman, but how these are different, says your wiry dull boyf from IT) can't be played that loud on a train.

People are twitching at you - but buried in your report, you don't notice. Some face coughs in your direction - but Wham!, it's all as if you're in your teenage bedroom again, grinning at silent posters. Your faith that you'll sail through the world, with everything working for you, has failed you here with your headphones. And, so...

Here comes Fist:

To put you right. To train you in the art of carriage etiquette. To point a finger into your face, or stab at your hip and force the sound off, or fill your ears with fury - and then silence. Right?

Or instead:

Fist stays quiet, fingers fidgetting at the corner of a paper, and then brushes past your perfect bottom at the exit, so gently and so softly that you don't even notice.

Pure Fist

Fist flicks the pages of the latest lame novel. Fist laughs at the classics and their ludicrous lessons. Fist scoffs the pop-sci books; their flares of a promised future are propaganda for funding and fame. Fist fiddles with the art books, fishing for boobs.

The Philosophy of Fistography is next. Under Kant, there's a "Staff Picks" card, left by Chris. He works behind the counter, all two-day-old stubble and cardigans, his badge proudly wonky.

"Kunt - Fistique of Pure Reason - Chris recommends this because -" and I couldn't read the rest. And Chris saunters past, grinning a dozy, half-stoned grin, smiling at the card like it's a spare, massive cock of his.

And all fist buys this lunch is a feast of brief comfort from the sandwich shop. But still he goes on, without even a paper cut.

Love Links

She loves me! She loves me too! And you? Not so sure about her!

Well little girls, normally I'd tell you all to shut up, but I have a little question for you...

Can I draw some hope from you? Hope that in amongst us evil human creatures, there are a few perfect shining examples, full of light, full of love, who look forever innocent with optimism at another, at any other, as if watching a bird jump happily around in an everlasting, evergreen old tree. Humans who suppose that maybe, just maybe, inside everyone there is a pure, beautiful soul, like religion says there just might be, like true love wants there to be; O hopeful, open, utterly-loving few, from you may I draw my hope?

And yet, you will disappear, perhaps as a tectonic plate fists another, and vibrations fists the waves, and a tsunami fists the continents and their hotels and shacks, and then from the earth out your unique, gratuitous light goes. Or perhaps perishing like a paralyzed fist, with the limp end of action in a dim old-age. Or perhaps with a madness that is like a fist with all the fingers broken, as you realise you signify nothing. Or perhaps at the end of a bullet, flying through your skull like a fist, a fist quivering metres away holding a fist-hard gun, the smoke from which rises up like plumes of dirt from a crematorium, or from a cigarette? Or perhaps a man will stand over you at the last gate, with one fist suffocating your nose and mouth, the other churning around in your flowers? Your lives, suddenly as empty as an empty fist – but without the fist. And the only trace of you that will remain is an internet page nobody will bother to read any more, if they even bother to read it now.

How could I dare to love you back? How could I dare to draw hope from you?

Infanticide

Pouring cigarette smoke into his tender throat, I breed my cruel children: balls of coughs, black swabs of phlegm, and a cancer in the post.

Cramming chilli and cheap meat into his turning tummy, I breed my mean army: a napalm of faeces dripping down the valley of his innards.

Once upon a time, I said: a fistful of dollars - don't spend it on the gym, and so I built my palace: his fat, ugly, warm and enormous gut.

Knuckling into his eyes, I crush the domes of their rival kingdoms like little eggs: blood-shot, exhausted, barely wanting to look, ready for the death of sleep.

His body teems with the poisons I have bred. Am I their Ruler? - his head might head-butt a computer or commuter, or some bone might deliberately break itself for a holiday of hospitalisation, or his eyes might vomit fat onto me the fist, or his faeces might climb up his throat to kiss a cigarette. His body a sudden civil war of such rivals, my children and conquests now my enemies.

Secrets and Cities

A TV sounding war through the wall. Shouting, serenading the cold hard concrete of a callous street. The descent of a distant plane, its pause and its purpose dying. Of course a siren – the culminating symbol, cipher, and symptom for the sounds of this city – is exactly on cue, as loud as a stereotype. All the unnecessary whirrings of a volatile, hot, vast hell waste away, before repeating, waste away, repeat. And there is never silence.

And this is no secret. The ears hear this hell most eloquently. But the slight thunder trembles the fat thighs. Tinkles and clinks around ten cold toes. In the lines along the eyes, it is located with ease. Hits of the air aggravate the hammer of the heart, and the clap of a fight clenches a fist. And then, another fist unhands itself, and fingers hack at a keyboard.

Hack fist hack, hush hush fist hack.

Is? Like?

My four fingers:

Are you plump penises, throbbing sensitively in the gloomy air of the city? Or are you more like sheathed knives, and ever ready to stab and stab and stab and stab?

My five nails:

Are you bitter, jagged penny-chews, cheap things for childish wants? Or are you more like ivory, an incredible thing of an incredible creature, the fact of your continued existence utterly brilliant?

My myriad bones:

Are you a machine, brutal, instrumental, mechanical, predictable? Or are you like a fine ornament made of the best china, to be preciously kept from other hands high up in a closed cupboard, except on special occasions?

Me fist myself:

Are you your blog, hateful, unpredictable, isolated? Or are you more like a glove, hating the cold air and the shaking human and the shocks and knocks of the city, longing to be casually tossed upon the arm of the chaise longue, with its comfortable, temporary peace?

Waves

And I say to the eyes:

Do not look at the beautiful temp, standing there with her back slightly to you, reaching up into the files. Do not look into the long, looping ringlets of her auburn hair, do not look into her eyes when she turns back to you. Do not study the shape of her 25 year old body, the curve of the hips, the little puff around the belly, the pale, freckled skin, too tender no doubt for the burning light of a summer sun. And do not look at those lips with the smile that is always there.

And I say to the ears:

Do not listen to the song she is humming, hints of a refrain in that soft Irish voice, lilting whispers of another world, far away from the office.

And I say to the penis:

Take all this beauty and make an object for yourself out of it, think nothing but sex of her. It is the crude outlines and pieces of a woman that matter - not this otherworldy thing of loveliness, here like magic amongst the grey of the shelves.

But the penis stays quiet.

And I say to the soul:

Beat it.

But the penis still stays quiet.

And I say to the you:

You have the idea now.

And I search around the whole of his body and mind for something to kill off the feeling. A joke, a crude thought, a work-related remark, a stifled-burp, an itching anus...

"What are you singing?" he asks her.

She turns, beautiful, smiling, beaufitul, and pauses, beautiful, and looks up, beautiful, and whispers the tune to herself... But she doesn't know.

And now, all for the fist to do is run through the waves of his hair, and the waves running over his face, waves from another universe spreading over the face of this dry man in an drab office, this 9-5 man, this dull and polite man, waves running up underneath his eyes, and tickling around his ears, and pulling at his cheeks, his mouth, waves from an image of loveliness, waves from a song that whispers out of nowhere sweet nothings to anyone, waves from the air and sung back into the air, but not by him, and -

"It sound like 'Let's Twfist Again'".

She's turned back already.

"Like what did you say?"

"Like 'Let's Twist Again'." He does a jokey rendition.

"Haha!" she replied, having to laugh because he manages her. "Nothing like it!"

And I say to myself:

Job done.

February 1st

"Pinch, punch,
first of the month,
and no returns back!"

Ahh, children, children as you lightly tap the arm of a friend, or trip someone up coming around a bend, or sing a pop-song at play, or struggle with the concept of gay - forget all about it. Each day is the first day of the rest of your life, but so what? But on the first day of each old month, you get to chant a sing-a-long daydream of a song - a childish rhyme, most innocent of things - which sanctions a crime, praises a punch, and frees a fist. Try it, live it, love it, and soon you'll get the gist.