Sunlit Pools

[thoke]

This story is based on a mix CD I just made. It's sort of a compilation of the lyrics from all the songs on the CD (12 in total), which I've tried to turn into a single piece of prose. Some of the lyrics I haven't altered much, and some of them I've mangled beyond recognition. I've been rereading it and editing bits for hours, and I haven't necessarily finished... I'm only stopping because I need to sleep now. I'll be interested to see if it makes any kind of coherent sense to anyone, or if it just looks like a bunch of lyrics shoved together.


Sunlit Pools

Last night while I was sleeping, I dreamt I met with Brendan Behan. I shook his hand and we passed some time together. I asked him about his philosophy of life.

He said, ‘I have cursed, bled and sworn, jumped bail and landed up in jail. Life has tried to stretch me, but the rope was always slack. And now that I’ve a pile, I’ll go down to the Chelsea. I’ll walk in on my feet, but I’ll leave there on my back.'

He told me he was going where the wind was blowing; to where whiskey runs in rivers. His words seemed wise to me. Nothing was ever gained by shedding some wet thing called a tear. When the world seems too dark and I need a light inside me, I’ll go to a bar and drink fifteen pints of beer, because the world has changed beyond recognition and I want to drop my trousers to it. The people in my town revere every new household appliance like it’s a new science. If the day came when I felt a natural emotion, I’d be so surprised I’d probably jump into the ocean. And it saddens me when I hear a train go by – I am stuck here.

I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen; every sensible child will know what I mean. The poor and needy are selfish and greedy on her terms. But most days I just lie in bed, and think about life and death. Neither one particularly appeals to me, but if one of these days I do feel a human emotion I’ll get such a shock I’ll probably lie in the middle of the road and die. Right now I’m tense as my hands clasp this pint glass, fingers on fingers.

I’ll stick to my plan: I don’t like drinking, but that’s what I’ll do. I don’t like my life, but I’ll get on with it anyway. I’ll sweat and have fevers and night terrors, just like Mother. When the pressure is too much I’ll pop pills from the doctor. Numbness is numbness, but I do wish I could get back to my youth, and back on the road to truth. What should I do? My Father doesn’t love me, because I’m too much like a daughter in his eyes – no son of his. I didn’t choose my parents, and this life; it chose me. I feel uninvited, but I can’t leave. I feel like a flower in eternal winter. I wish I could drown in this foul-tasting bitter. I’ll be drunk on the blood for forty days and nights, and see red. I’ll sink and say goodbye, because if I breathe I will die.

I emerge from my self-obsession to be told that you’re dead and there’s a body in a car somewhere, but anyway our relationship was going nowhere. I offer samples of your teeth and hair to the men who appear at our door, asking questions about your shape and size (a subtle joke between men of our age). Should I laugh or cry? If I start to feel better, should I lie? Is it not enough for you to have lived and loved? Or for you to have lived, and for me to have loved you, and for you to have driven your car off a bridge into a river because I couldn’t help you? If I don’t know by now then I never will.

Out comes pad and notes are made, and they ask me, were we happy? And am I happy? These are questions I tried to avoid when we were together, now employed in quick succession. Am I happy? The men stare, and I should beware; they’ll only smile to see me while my time away. Once you’ve seen these people, as they really are, it no longer seems worth the effort to try to win the world. Look around you, and you’ll find that the ground is not far from where you are. And this is bad because down under, people don’t allow themselves to grow; they’re always tired and the charms are hired from out their eyes, and it’s unsurprising. Take your time and you’ll be fine, and say a prayer for those tramps on the ground.

If you work out what you should be doing, don’t set a date and don’t try to tell yourself you’ve already done it. Don’t be shy. You’ll learn to fly and see the sun even when the day is done, if you can just see yourself as you are – just a thing beneath a star who came to stay one rainy day in autumn, for free – and be what you’ll be. Open up your broken cup and fill it with goodly sin and sunshine today. Let out the hymns you’re hiding, and when people frown at the things you say, let them frown. Say what you have to say about the farmers and their fun, and the things behind the sun, and the people in your head that tell you everything’s been said already. The movement in my brain sends me out into the rain, where I find one of these people.

I find a blonde, who says, ‘I am the mind that burns inside this girl’s body. I use both my arms to push you back when you worry me. My eyes are holes and warm treacle pours out of them. You know nothing about me, and how would you ever find out? What are you going to do when you can’t have everything you want?

‘I let the ground catch me when I fall, drunk and bad, but I’m used to this. These eyes are screws that hold back tears that would just pour out. And still you say I feel nothing inside me, but how would you ever know that? How would you know my numbness? What are you going to do when you can’t have everything? I can’t help you.’

Indeed she can’t, but her tone becomes soft and sympathy is extended, ‘I heard that you came back from the dead, played and merrily scooped up the soul of the wine. Have courage when you’re down under (tired and charmless), and you look somebody in the eye and ask for time or money; try not to look too scummy. This is not a happy place to be. Just look at me – there’s nothing nice around me, almost everyone agrees. This is a hell of a year for you, my friend. And I’m afraid I can’t promise you anything. I know you’ve heard it all before.’

But love is just around the corner, I insist. I remind her what happened yesterday. I tell her when we showered in the cool rain and I fainted on the ground I was free, swimming in starlight. I tell her, ‘you were so scared – you washed my hair in the bright red stream and you really thought I was dead. I know now why you make me so scared: you’re all I can see. You speak and my hearing’s impaired, and you’re all over me. Later in your bed, you held my head for a while, and then you said goodnight and blew away. The wind kissed with silly saliva, “sassy shear near she should’ve she sighed the grove ska pop sa pum sa po” and you were gone. Today your face is suddenly old, but I know it well.’

She says, ‘Ooh-na-na-na-na, I’ll be sitting in your mirror. Now is the place where the crossroads meet. Will you look into the future? Never say goodbye to my part of your life. No, no! Oh, let me live! C’mon and let me live, girl!’

“Girl?!” This must be my Father. I say, ‘this moment doesn’t belong to you, Dad! It belongs to me: to your little boy and your little girl, and the one hand clapping. Where on your palm is my little line, when you’re written in my palm as an old memory?’

‘Never, never let me go!’ he says.

I am the exorcist. I speak, to her but not him, and my voice booms:

Can’t you see where memories are kept bright?
Tripping on the water like a laughing girl.
Time in her eyes is spawning past life,

One with the ocean and a woman unfurled,
Holding all the love that waits for you here.
Catch us now for I am your future,

A kiss on the wind and we’ll make the land.
Come over here to where When lingers,
Waiting in this empty world,

Waiting for Then when the life-spray cools.
For Now does ride in on the curl of the wave
And you will dance with me in the sunlit pools.

We are of the going water and the gone.
We are of water in the holy land of water,
And all that’s to come runs in with the thrust on the strand.

My Dad leaves the woman’s body, and her youth is restored. He blows away now, screaming. I make out a few words.

‘See there, “run away” you said! To go! You were it.’

I lie now, in the middle of the road, underneath a red star – under her. I want her there. I’ll see you there, under her; down under, where people don’t allow themselves to grow (they’re always tired and the charms are hired from out their eyes, and it’s unsurprising). You are there, and I slowly climb over her, while you lay under her in a red pool. I’ve grown away. You feel me float away, far too empty.

You wail, ‘Oh so alone! I want to go home. Oh find me inside of a nocturne. The blonde, how I love you to be by my side!’ But the crowd is on her side as the car straggles a bridge by the water. She misses her crawl and trips far, laughing all the way. She is heavy at the side of a dell. You hire charms from her dead eye and your sobs are pathetic, ‘I be the lonely one, my bride!’ I leave on the waddling wheel while you and the other idiots flail, a gasp shringing. A bad bell is ringing the angel – the ‘daughter’.

[spencer_broughton]

Well done, you like The Smiths. I haven't got chance to read it all because I'm at work, but I did spot the Morrissey lyrics.

[thoke]

Hehe, good stuff. If you can name the other eleven songs, you win a mars bar.

[spencer_broughton]

No Mars Bar for me. I thought the second paragraph could be Elvis Costello - (I Don't Want to go to) Chelsea but I have no clues on the rest.

[thoke]

Second paragraph is 'Streams of Whiskey' by The Pogues.