BRADFORD BUSES

A silver Fiat drives alongside the bus, there's a dog in the back of the car, we stare at each other; this is the most meaningful exchange I've had with anyone in a long while. The man in front of me conceals balding with a comb-over moderately well, I can see sunspots on his head. He's wearing a sheepskin jacket, the wool's gone yellow, some may mistake this discolouredness as vintage worn, but my nose detecting nicotine tells me otherwise.

I chose my seat poorly. The black silkiness of an Asian lady's hair comforts me.

Bus halts, it's nine-thirty in the morning, that's when all the OAPs are entitled to get on for free, there's a queue of them. Flap caps, headscarfs, raincoats, checked wheeled bags, sapient wrinkles get seated. The last in line struggles to stand as the bus driver jets off again, She's not old- late twenties tops. Her breasts are epic huge, and clearly she is not wearing a bra, God help her. She sits next to me, God help me, and once again I'm reminded that passing my driving test is one of life's imperatives. Our legs touch, instinctively I want to recoil my leg into the little room I have left, but I don't want her to be conscious that I don't want my leg to touch hers, so they remain touched to save any feelings being offended. If it were summer I wouldn't be wearing tights so we'd be skin on skin. My left side would be glued to her arm and leg, whilst also having my right side melt against the glass sun. This is the only time I will be thankful that it's not summer.

Off the bus and walking down an alley cutting to college, I notice 50 pigeons on a roof, they all raise a wing at me, I give them a telling smile of 'if I had a handful of maggots your mouths would be filled' and they puff their breasts in salutation. On the right are a row of terrace houses, there is a cauliflower in the last patch of cement garden. I walk towards a group of tigers on Horton road. They are orange streaks, maximum lip-liner, and bed hair deep in vanity. Their bras are stuffed with attitude, a car beeps.

Under Nature's Law

Her mouth is bloody.
Her shredded tongue sprawls out
Like a birth of worms engaging the birds,
They hungrily tug
And sing O Joyful! Joyful!
Her spine makes a row of eggshells.
Eyes unused, looking like spawn
Looking for tadpoles.

Squid

I draw my initials in the
condensation.
Then move my fingers onto your back
and make the same rotation.

Skin's getting softer and softer and softer
like the head of a squid.
My outer thighs are pushed against
the pink sides of the bath
as my inner thighs are pressed against you.

I ask you some questions but you just
reply in sighs.
You attend to my feet, at least.

Unhinged

5:26 the screws loosened
As the truth peeled away
From the walls.
Stacks trembled
Oppressed by the weight
Before me, you unhinged.
Descending further.
The sound of fire splitting
You& I

Fooled by the roses in your eyes.
The earth rings through me now.
Perished are the petals.

The Correlation

Sam arrived today, replacing Derek, and before Derek there was Peter, and before Peter the bed had spent a long time easing an A-Z list of illnesses to recovery. Some chronic, some temporary, some accidental, others fatal.  Sam had a broken nose, jaw and internal bruising which put him in the temporary bracket. It would have been labelled fatal had he received another blow to his head, he could smile about that, but as he tried the true centre of irreducible pain pushed flat on his heart.

Confined by these four white walls, and an absent of movement there was little Sam could do but wrestle with his thoughts, which mostly concerned girls.  Girls fascinated Sam endlessly and confused him inexorably.  It was the one thing in his life that he just couldn’t figure out.  And if he couldn’t figure this thing out then he couldn’t figure out the entire architecture of the Human Relationship, so would have missed the major part of what it meant to be Human at all. It was that thought which paralysed him more than the pain burning from his jaw to each retina.

He needed to move away from these four white walls before a tick landed in the psychosomatic box. But he knew all that awaited him were patients shuffling around on their sinewy yellow legs, stiff and thin like uncooked spaghetti. It was catch 22 on the ward; you'll recover from smashed bones and a burst diaphragm but you'll be crying at the loss of  your grey matter. It was so easy to picture the correlation on a graph. Length of time in hospital equals degree of insanity. He thought about documenting his hospital admittance in the good name of science, but the more thought placed upon his mental stability, and the pleasant nurses the less convinced he became of the theory. 

‘‘Do you want anything Sam?’’the nurse pointed at a trolly which revealed various liquids and little dishes of runny tapioca pudding . He dare not ask for a blowjob, so opted for some Vitamin C in the form of orange juice.

Marigolds

Dave says his brain can only flow with alcohol, and despite the car crash he still holds this mantra. I watch him hobble around on his zimmerframe mumbling harmless merriments, ‘‘where’s my 2pm visit? I want my back massage’’. Even though massage is code for Russian Vodka he's still my favourite patient.

He has the kind of appearance you’d avoid walking towards on the same side of the street. Sits down on a bus, and someone gets up. Definitely not the kind of character your nan would invite into the house for a cup of tea and biscuits, but a guy you’d see in your local park lazing his bony discrepancy on plastic blue swings, with his liquid habit to his mouth like a kid with a Cornetto. A shame, ‘cos his heart is plump, and conversation fat with jokes. His face shows a life dedicated to years of true decadence. I wish I could say those bursting capillaries weaving manically around on his bulbous nose came from the work of hard labour. But they are definitely the work of hardcore pub time, nine till five.

I also have a fondness for Mary, a seventy-two year old recovering from a hip replacement after a nasty fall, which smashed everything below her waist to dust. When I bathe her, she puts on a pair of diamond drop earrings and matching pendant, says it gives her nakedness aristocratic style. And as I wash under the folds of her once desired, pendulous breasts, I see it too. You should see Dave and Mary when they get together, their hilarity pops a pin in ward life. So I tell them to go fourth and spread their seeds of glee like good disciples of the hospital.

Most of the other patients don’t take to the ward with such light affection as Dave and Mary. Most expressions mirror the multicoloured wilting flowers homed on their drib bedside tables, kept there from day one. For them, everyday is like stepping in shit. And I’m tired of their shit filled footsteps snailing around the ward, for the perkier souls to potentially stand in. I call these patients the ‘Weeds’- their sole purpose being to strangle their roots of pessimism around the marigolds. Dave is a marigold, but he isn’t to be strangled. For I the Gardner waters the vibrancy of his pretty, orange mane every morning and night.

To Have a Twin

I have a twin brother Ki. Who, in the comfort and seemingly unthreatening home of the womb, pilfered the highs of my parents genetic formula. Leaving me to lick up the dregs of waste, like a perfect Darwinian story.

                  Click, to get the bigger picture. The detail will make you vomit.

He has also just started a blog, but deeply procrastinates, so expect to see very little over at kiyoong.blogspot.com

The Dentist

I completed my sixth and greatest Sonata four months ago. It will be performed by Vienna’s most regarded pianist, and I look forward to that with infallible joy. What inspires me is a question I have been asked repeatedly, but the truth could lay my success open to great perils. So I will leave the truth enamelled to assumption.  And tell only you.

I am dentist by profession, but a composer by default.

I discovered the slenderness of her neck as her head tilted back, her alabaster skin brought out a dewy pinkness in her lips, as they open from bud to bloom. The music followed. Every tooth had a letter assigned to it, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Letter G landed soulfully on her molar, her canine was distinctly F sharp, and the piece ended exquisitely on high C, upper incisor.

I have saved a few select casts from the most instrumental mouths. Placing them on my baroque mantelpiece and depending on my company they pass as contemporary art. Often, upon catching sight of my ornamental teeth the tips of my fingers tingle, and arch up eagerly to play the teeth like the keys of a piano. Of late Debussy has been thoroughly enjoyed.

One of my most well received Sonatas came from a set of short, tightly screwed teeth. They weren’t by any means lacquered with a Hollywood gleam, but their gritty strength made way for an effective staccato.

Braces have the power to change the melody of the mouth; they cause a transformation from the disjointed to the sublime.

Young

I twirl my fingers
Through your brown, greying hair.
Moisturising my tips
With the oil from your scalp.

I tease myself onto your lap,
Open your hand and admire
The thick veins on your wrist.
The television consumes you.
Trickles of lah lah lah.
Irritate my ears.

Foie Gras

''I’ve got to get her back, you listening? I’ve got to get her back!’’

My consciousness flickers, becoming momentarily aware I’m being spoken to, so I mumble threatening obscenities, exerting as little energy as possible in hope of returning back to sleep.

My roommate Karl begins to irritate me further, ''Mate, I saw Lorna, walking with some dirty ass cockroach of a guy, no way can she be seeing him, has to be her friend!''

''Your attempts will be all in vain, I’ve heard some guy from Oxford got his hands on her during the summer, it’s probably the cockroach you’re speaking of.'' I was never one to beat around the bush.

''Pffff, she loved me, and I didn’t finish with her in a nasty way, I never said anything bad to her'' Karl protested, but his voiced sounded fairly uncertain.

''It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that can hurt Karl.'' I stared at him with one eye, whilst my other tried to preserve sleep, but he just kept silent, letting his reflective grimace tell me to shut up. Which pleased me fine.

Karl had been seeing Lorna for most of the second year at uni, but broke it off when she started getting clingy. They didn’t match anyhow, Karl was an arty guy, cigarette always flapping from his bottom lip, and he talked about art like the media talked about celebrity. And he constantly wore yesterday’s clothes. Not that he was lazy, but rather, maintaining personal hygiene came far down on the list. Whereas Lorna, I saw as being a square, a pretty one though.

I met Karl, in our first year of uni, we had both joined the Literature society, and that’s where he met Lorna too. I remembered him because he called me Michael straight after I had told him my name was Miguel. I tried to have a conversation with Lorna that same day too, about poetry, I shared my liking for Ginsberg, and she replied that his political and social voice was vulgar. I gritted my teeth at that pompous, little remark. And when she gushed about Sylvia Plath I groaned,

''I got half way through that, and went looking for a rope and stairs'' which surprisingly didn’t go down well. I remembered her glass black eyes narrowed. I smiled.

When I thought of Karl and Lorna, it was difficult for me not to refer to the Oedipus complex; she was always mothering him, and he lapped it up like an impressionable foetus. Cleaning up after him, blowing crumbs off his face more than kisses, telling him the do's and don’ts of table etiquette. She fed him like he was foie gras about to be splattered on a Parisian plate. She had a marvellous way for making a capable adult look embarrassingly incapable, so when I came into the room one time and saw her feeding him nipple shaped strawberries, I left bemused. That may explain why he wants her back, there would be no dirty washing crammed under the bed, less takeaways, less questionable smells, and more finger fed food.

Throughout the first year, I didn’t really connect with any girls, I was quite satisfied simply admiring their hypnotically, gyrating buttocks glide past me, but saw few faces I wanted to talk to. It’s not often I’ll talk to a girl first, unless I’m really attracted to her. And in the second year, I was too busy scrambling for good grades. But now in my third year, I think I deserve a little light relief amongst all the books, so I’m open to suggestions. Got to try a little I guess.

I picked up the phone and dialled Lorna. Twirling my fingers around the cord.

The Vultures

We contemplated politics
Passed through Picasso
Jumped blind into our desires.

Spent the day in bed
Quilted with a primitive engage
Then sank into the night.

It was all moving too fast
Two engines colliding head on
No turning, no stopping, no break.

We wobbled on a tight-rope,
Arms flung out, buckling under
The first impressions of love

But as quickly as it came
It went even quicker
Spiralling off into the night.

A flock of vultures swooped down
The moment I saw your morals
Clear like blood on your hands.