scratchings on an envelope from 1992

I remember…ice. Cold white ice in a bowl on an old wooden table. Me reaching in and taking a piece of ice from the bowl, putting it gently in my mouth, standing there.

A dead fire. Grey powder drifting on the breeze around me. Plunging my hand
into the heart of it, where glowing coals lay waiting.

People looking at me from behind a glass barricade. Me smashing my head
into
the barricade, hoping for a reaction.

An orange, rotted, swarming with fruit flies, baking in the piss yellow
sun.

Cigarette smoke rising beautifully before me.

A continual, malicious hum in the air, rising and falling like the breath
of
a great, sinister machine.

A child on a makeshift tyre swing beneath a great dying tree.

Sweat-soaked sheets and a pain in my chest. Coughing up blood.

Cured plastic.

Belching haze, hissing.

A marginal reminder of a rusted hinge.

A triangular mirror, reflecting the clock on the wall showing a quarter
past
one…or a quarter to eleven.

Brown carpet, clean, but worn flat in places, the binding fibre coming
through.

A dusty mantelpiece, with a clean radius near the edge, sticky, dark red
stains, where someone has rested their wine glass.

Cobwebs in the ceiling corner, with the exoskeleton of a spider resting
there eternally.

White shirts hanging on the clothesline, fabric suspended in the stifling
autumn afternoon.

A power cord, without a socket.

Ethereal soundscapes.

Tendrils, reaching for me, embracing me.

Destitute fate, tied and shocking in a net of smoke.

A rickety dressing-table, weighed down with unused cosmetics.

Filthy throw-rug, rolled up in the corner.

Leather sandal with a broken strap.

Rotary telephone, disconnected.

Splinters of glass from a shattered ceiling globe.

An air vent, concealing death.

Lifeless candles.

A sense of loss, perhaps.

Yellowed newspapers, brittle and crying.

Unmistakable shadows.

The smell of stale coffee.

Chocolate. Dreaming sickness.

A chair, smashed beyond recognition.

Cities, melting and bending in the sea.

A creaking floorboard in the southern end of the room.

Ash, spilling from the fireplace.

A forgotten face in a blistered photograph. Beside it, a damaged typewriter.

Raging at a black nothing.

A thousand parading mice.

Waiting for something.

Utopia.

1 comment

  1. Hey psychopomp…just curious, where did you come up with this stuff? Just dark musings or something else? I especially like the “breath of a great, sinister machine”…very cool!

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