THREE MORE PIECES THIS MORNING…

[For good or bad, trying to write from different, angles, perspectives, in different voices.]

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AN APPRENTICE

This is how to build a secret:
Try not to be seen.
Try to be unseen.

Find a small house.
Paint it white.
Buy a cat.
Talk to it.

If you are allergic to cats
a bird will do, but not
a bird that will repeat
what you say.

Invite guests.
Avoid meeting them.
Let them believe
they are alone.

Buy a display cabinet.
Buy unusual bones.
Guests always find
exhibits intriguing.

Not even so much
as a crucifix
on the guest room
wall, though.
Temptation works
to its own rules.

Restrict internet use.
Allow them no more
than two hours a day
in which to watch
pornography.

Remember
everyone
eventually
overstays
a welcome.

As for yourself
be sure to cook
things through,
especially eggs.

Informers are
everywhere.
Use them.

Try to leave
no dream
unresolved.

Try your best
not to have
children.

We are all
apprentices,
none of us
sane.

ORDERS

I wake up, consider the task I have been given.
Today I must expand the surface of the earth.
Obviously I don’t have a clue how to do this.
I am neither scientist nor metaphysical poet.
I have no access to mind-altering chemicals.
I prefer watching the sun rise. I like birdsong.

I check the email for attachments, pictures.
There is neither instruction manual nor key.
What should I do? Where should I begin?
If you have even the slightest idea, tell me.
Please? Or at least keep me company today.
Let’s have coffee. Yes, and buttered toast.
After that I could clean off the bicycles.
We could ride down old paths into the past.
Maybe dig the vegetable patch, plant peas.

What is the punishment for disobedience?
I’ve always been forgetful, they’ll know that.
They might believe it slipped my mind, yes.
And why would they pick someone like me?
I wouldn’t if I were them. I’m a crazy choice.
I’m not fit for purpose, never have been.
Yes, it’s their fault. Not mine. Not at all.

A DISORDERED TALE OF DISORDERED LOVERS

We walked to the top of a hill, looked out over the horizon,
the church spire rising dark above the allotments and Victorian houses.
People walked the footpaths below as we thought of that other day
just about in the middle of the 1940s when we stood there, looking
into a future that was exciting and about which we barely dared to hope.

After an uneven, difficult night I sit by the window and watch the sun come to strength.
The noise in my head goes on, hour after hour. It’s impossible to put things in order.
Life is a jumbled up set of notes, dreams, reminiscences, snatches of news thrown in.
The outside world clings on in its electrified brightness; purposeless, as far as I can tell.
A delivery van. A parcel carried to a door. A girl on her way to school checks her phone.
Time screams at me: You know nothing of me, nothing about me, nothing at all!

I spend a year building a rockery, a wall that holds back the earth in the sloping garden
which provides space for a flat path for us to walk around the back of the house from
the damp yard to the small lawn over which we hang our washing. The sun is best there.
A breeze blows through, light glows on the garden ornaments, there are songbirds
in the privet hedge that runs up the boundary all the way to the pine trees at the top that
have been growing inch-by-inch for centuries. A squirrel stares. We are twenty years old.

Dig down, keep digging but be careful. Methane gives us burning stones.
So poorly paid. We all were. Yes, but in summer, we took a rowing boat on to the lake.
A picnic hamper, beer, a little wine in a leather flask. (Winter came and with it, war.)

Sunlight on the edges of your dark hair as you walk between birches and willows.

You wrote me love letters in your spidery hand with the broken-nibbed fountain pen.

On the other side of the road, over there, there you are, running down the hill and waving.

Happiness dissolves into, among other peripheries, impotence of one kind or another.

Remember that Christmas, we all crowded around the table to eat.
You were the only one to wear your paper hat.
We all drank too much, I dare say.
Thankfully, the elderly neighbours were deaf.

Now your granddaughter interrupts, is asking:
What happened to him? Did you ever find out?
And you will say:
Oh, I didn’t look. Didn’t want to look.
He was alive, just didn’t want to come home.
None of us are ever what we seem.
She will pause, a finger on her bottom lip.
She will look at you with her perfect eyes.
She will take a breath and ask:
Yes, but what was he really like? It would
help me understand if I knew a little more.
And you will say:
His face isn’t there.
His smell, his taste, the sound of him, gone.

And your granddaughter will look out of the window, see
the crowd marching through the street with their flags and songs.
She will close the shutters, draw the blinds.