The thing about cats...

4 am. The bell had been rung twice. He opened the door and fixed her with a look that spelt disapproval, hurt and deceit. But then he threw the door open and let her in, for the same reason that you would let in a stray cat – your heart is melting.

He bends to nuzzle her hair and suddenly sneers into her ear, “ There’s only one thing I can say to you : You’re a dirty, filthy hippy!” But even as he was saying this, he bent further and kissed her anyway.

Beneath the day’s dust, grime and stale make-up, you could still see her smirk of silent self-accomplishment.

Irony

She was exactly his cup of tea.
Unfortunately he wasn't thirsty.

The whispers are as loud as tear drops and as wretched as cries in the night. And they streak down her cheeks and create gradients on her finely made-up face. Hurt can be brutal, but image is something else altogether.

morbid and grotesque
they hover wild around the crime scene
their metallic wings reflecting stars
their ears as shapely as pointed pencils

He held the blade steady as her darkening eyes burnt holes into the back
of his skull. Even under all that pressure he didn't flinch. Then he
swiftly marked her milk pure thigh with a cruel red line. The pain
shoots like burning acid.

The imaginary pain shakes her awake and she's suddenly sitting straight
up, breathing heavily and sweating like it's summer in India. Fingers
levitate to the imaginary wound and the blood abruptly becomes real.

The light is fading and he can’t remember much. He’s forgotten the shine of her hair and the way it feels between his fingers. The way she winces and then smiles at the pain. Her beautiful, bony, bare shoulders under a thin blue blouse. The way her dusty pink lips conceal a smile. He only remembers the words she said as a make-shift Goodbye, “I’ll wait for you, but not in this life…”

Dust swirls at her heels, she walks
Songs stick in her head, she hums
Someday I'll write a book, she think
on the 'Perils of being a Pretty Girl'

Pet Shop

She enters. The dogs begin to bark in unison.

A dust-encrusted radio spits out an old song - Little Richard's band screaming, "Can't help it, the girl can't help it..."

She sidesteps the mangled, the tick-ridden and the runt of the litter. She walks on air as far as her stilettos will allow. Her perfume, as exquisite as it is electric, parts the way.

Walking amongst the most beautiful, she chooses the best and picks him out.

He stands for her.
He sits for her.
Rolls over, plays dead for her.
And then he will stand on his head for her.

She gives the dog a bone.
And then she runs along home.

An as she wanders off aloof,
the store clerk says, "There goes the goose."


Rhyme was never intended.
It walked in uninvited.
To throw a pang of amatuerish my way.

Inevitably the rumour spills forth and shatters; tactlessly, tastelessly, gracelessly. It falls, like a breaking crystal throwing refracted rainbow light; it falls, like the baubles that tumble when a Christmas tree falls; it falls, like a ruined, leaking house of glass. And the stone throwers will be homeless in the streets, but replete with the power of their words. The birds will sing no more for want of a tree, lack of a home. Yet the hornets return to nests once left vacant.

Out-of-Town Strange

As she entered the room, a gruff voice was saying,
"I hate the French! If there's one race I hate, it's the French."

She walked before them; tall, beautiful and confident,
but a voice in her head kept saying,
"How I wish I wasn't French! How I wish I wasn't French!"

The memories don't fade easily for her. When she least expects it they begin seeping back. The cinnamon bark timber of voice. The delicate colour of skin. Hair like flowing honey. And eyes, like mystical windows. Finally, the most perfect little ears in the world and she begins to weep.

Christmas Horror

Too soon the sky began to drip. A sudden red cloud covered the earth heralding the beginning of bloodletting season. From the thick filth the leeches and ticks crawled and beneath every Christmas tree they found a home. Drunk on Yuletide cheer, the families slept sound and the leeches came out of the woodwork. Literally.

Colour Contortion

She sat by the window dreaming of coffee as the raven drew near. It
perched itself on a branch and settled its' wings, dark as the thoughts
that unsettled her. The black coffee steamed and she poured the milk,
smooth as the skin of the girl she was thinking off. Porcelain white of
ivory bones, skin of delicate milk coffee and hair of honey brown. And
the sky dripped slowly, filling heavily with tears. The bird was as
sordid and damp as her mind. And the girl in her thoughts was bluer by
the minute.

"Say the word slowly", she said, as she nibbled his ear.
"And say it with feeling, like you really mean it."
"Wed Nes Day", he whispered, wincing in pain.

Terminally Ill

The fight was a cruel one, but they fought hard and tirelessly. And within a month, each of them had terminated relations with that one thing that had held their family together.

Lamp Light

His words were reverberating in her head like laughter in an empty room.

"Be careful what you wish for..."

And all around everybody seemed to be smiling away, smiling at everyone and everything but her. In this place, she thought she'd get by on a smile, that people would be warm to her because of her lovely face. But her fair skin paled a sickly gray as the locals moved graciously, luminescent, comfortable in their beautiful skin.

She opened her mouth to speak but realized how useless her words were in this place of boundless beauty. The infinite pale had made her taciturn. When the shroud of darkness fell like a mosquito net over the watery city, she crawled beneath a street lamp and begged the invisible for dreamless sleep.

The lines run deep into his face like rivulets that pour into his stock white mustache, locking his mouth in a parenthesis of resounding laugh lines.

He's tired of dreaming other people's dreams. He's tired of pulling the darkness from the sky at the crack of dawn so that the ungrateful can crawl from their comfortable beds. He's tired of bringing the sun to half-mast at noon and putting the clouds up for the one's who complain about the sunshine. And then tired again of building up the soft moonlight so that young lovers can be inappropriate on city park benches.

He seems smiling, even when he's not, perhaps that's why they take advantage of him.

Kink Unlimited

He stared down at her bright red stillettos; 8 inches of bloody murky heel - dangerous enough to spear your heart right through.  Her gorgeous legs quivered from the unwarranted attention. With shoes so sexy, who needs a pretty face, she thought.

Love, in dishonest times

He flicked an invisible switch and the ceiling over their heads disappeared without a whisper. Starlight beamed gently into the room, bathing it in shades of ethereal blue. The moon shone pale, dishonest with secrets that it tried to hide. As she looked up, a shooting star darted across the black ink sky. She placed her hands firmly in her lap and began to twiddle her thumbs, it was all she could do to keep her hands off him.

Winter Song

He returned to the little brick house in the valley, in the exuberance
of summer. Flowers were blooming everywhere and cold winter frost was
a distant memory. The little wooden door was exactly as he remembered
it, even though the last time he walked through was two decades ago.
He was old and grey now, and so was his little lady. An aching pain in
his heart said she might not let him in, after all the faces he's
seen. But he knew that her love was true. She'd spent the flower of
her beautiful youth in his memory and every sunshiney day taking care
of his children. Now there would be no dancing in the rain or making
angels in the gentle snow. They were both terribly spent and the
winter of their love had begun, but he thought they would salvage it
still.