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I've seen a few threads like this before, so I don't think I'll suffer the faceknives, so here goes:
Below are two bit of writing, by, er...me, and I was wondering what the lovely people of the 'Lith might make of them. Any sort of criticism most warmly welcomed.
1) "Fragment", March 2005 (possibly my favourite thing I've done)
Rollo Malone, perched on a roof, silhouettes himself against the sky. The fading lilt of the evening light flattens the slope and the curve of his back (against the blue in a a pleasing way). He is waiting atop the shed, you see, for to be late for his lady friend (this is how in his thoughts he names her). Upon the auspicious tick of five-thirty, he dismounds (fully intending to mount again later), and leaps the garden fence.
Oh my!
A tingling, malingering ball of charisma, he saunters down the airy street, and nary a car passes smokily by. This quietly pleases him of a late summer's evening. (and a devious twinkle alights in his eye). Though his chest is broad and his waist is slim, he laks a a gift to give to his lady. (He passes beside the railway station, where weary commuters come home to roost. (and briefcases rut like pigs in a sty.)) His friend who's a lady requires a tribute; a flower, perhaps, or a golden band? But he lacks even a spa-shop box of chocolates, and she'll slam the door in his face for sure. Always he embarks on his visits unplanned. As he descends to the sodium-lit Main Street, a floral tribute snags his gaze. A bouquet on a streetlight, tied on with string. A gift to the elderly dead (of a car crash) - Mrs Briggs of Clanfield, Berks, 93 (or so the card with it proclaimed her to be). Rollo considers it a pitiful thing.
He removes it with scissors, the card is discarded - over the shoulder like salt from a gypsy. The flowers placed gently under the left arm. . On wards and onwards to the house of his lover he walks with a posy three days old and dry. Though his lady might spurn him, he'll walk on regardless. And stroll on with gift and his head held high.
2) "My Day", August 2004
I wander (rather aimlessly) through Palatine dusk, and attempt to recall my middle name. There's probably a moral to all this somewhere. Meandering down a bosky avenue of fractal literary paradigms, a passing gerund tells me, allusively, that "A philosopher being a lover of truth, a man who discovers that there is no truth is no philosopher. Discuss, for a maximum of 25 marks". I pointedly ignore it, and use the aforesaid point to pare my nails, which have become rather assertive recently. Seizing a particularly buoyant clipping, I glide effortlessly through the leaf-mould of history, propelled by one hundered and three dwarfish pseuds, each with the face of Leon Trotsky. Of course, you only have my word for this, as they're completely invisible.
Before this place grey town woulden be'd.
Is the use of obfuscatory language an atavistic attempt at dereification here, or is it all in truth a pack of lies?
The position of a notional comma in the previous sentence will enable you to know what I mean.
I'm in a loose scrubland at the moment, and my boots are brand new from Wainwrights. It's all red, unless perhaps it isn't.
Before this, there was a grey town, I ponder, before being interrupted by what appears to be a small child's concept of Margaret Thatcher, circa 1987, which is a sort of sphinxy thing with garlic-crushers for arms. In my opinion, it's marginally less alarming than the original. As if from a great distance, I hear the hollow sound of Joh Bunyan rotating rapidly in his grave. I quizzically render the beast harmless with a well-aimed teabag, climb into a waiting non-sequiteur, gun the engine with a razon smile, and by the time you've realised this sentence is far too long, you've missed the bus. Don't dismiss this as fiction, for worse, 'creative writing' (I shudder as I utter the dread words) - and I am talking to you.
If I know you're reading this, then I seem to know a future event. Which, excluding supreme egotism and phallic arrogance (Doctor Freud to the waiting room, please) means that time dsoetn ndee to be lienra.
However, if you didn't get the point of all that, then the Galactic censor or whatever (I pause to dodge a falling cliché) has got to me.
I decide to write this all down on a rock, which is conveniently flat and sheltered, but can't find my pen, that is to say my bottle-green Lamy. I have other pens, but know only too well the perils of writing in cheap biro.
I sigh, and walk on, pausing only to trip up a bespectacled, robed plagiarism wearing little round glasses. As it falls into an unexpected pit, I permit myself a coherent sentence.
"Before this, there was a grey town, and I have no memory of the transition," I say, knowing the answer all along, but not telling for the sake of form. On the horizon I spy with my adjective eye what is almost certainly an eyebrow. Which is a trifle odd.
Then, I find myself in bed and everything's measurable again, most disconcertingly, although not as disconcertingly as the fact that my haircut appears to be rather different than I had imagined it. Jarringly, I recall that to end a pice with the revelation that all preceding was a dream is the ultimate narrative faux-pas, and so quickly formulate some dross about a long and self-improving interior quest before flitting, Puck-like, away, clutching an item of ladies' underclothing.
Out the window, there is a grey town. |
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