YOU HAVE UNTIL THE BELL RINGS

if we discovered

sound & solid proof 

of eternal & rigid 

predestination

it would not

& could not

change anything at all

could it ?

~

please discuss
you have until the bell rings
& six foot of chalk for your slate

GUEST POST, TROUBLE BY HEIDI JAMES

Trouble by Heidi James

Heidi James

So The Doves.com

‘We’re just here to take your statement,’ he says, ‘nothing to worry about at the moment.’ He takes out his notebook and pen and turns the volume down on his radio. He sits opposite me on the armchair, his stab vest and heavy boots at odds with the soft furnishings. I want to rearrange the cushion behind his back. He will crease the covers slouching like that. I nod and tuck my hands under my thighs.

It’s hard not to think of your life as a maths problem, where this event added to this crisis, added to this choice, subtracted by that choice, multiplied by this situation divided by sleepless nights and God knows how many bad habits equals this. If I were the religious type I’d consider it the most efficient way of deciding who to let into heaven. But I’m not. The religious type I mean. But I was never very good at maths, among other things.

I don’t often take the initiative, it’s not that I’m unimaginative I just don’t like to cause trouble. I’m used to sitting back and letting things happen, letting people make their own choices, do what they have to do. It’s better that way. My sister calls me a pushover, she’d be surprised now if she could see all this; but a girl is missing, and I could be doing the right thing.

I’d phoned them, that time before she disappeared. And I had every right to, listening to them fighting, screaming night after night. The walls are thin, and I need my sleep, I need my peace. I have every right, as much as the next person to have a little peace at home. And I gave them chances. It wasn’t like it was the first time, I wasn’t sticking my nose into their business. They made it my business by being so loud. Anyway, I wish someone had called the police for me, when my trouble started, I probably don’t actually, come to think of it. God only knows what I want.

The trouble didn’t start the drinking, that came later so I can’t really blame him or the situation, but it didn’t help. It creeps up on you, slowly. You go from enjoying a drink at lunch with friends, to watching the clock and keeping busy till the time you can have one glass and still drive and do the school run. But then you drink a bit more and a bit more and you end up in an incident where you’re having a fight with another driver while your kid is screaming in the car for you to stop. Or where you’re so drunk at work that you can barely stand, so you lie and say you were hit by a car on the way in and have concussion.

Maybe life is more like a chemical reaction, you add this element to that, and heat it and shake it, and add another solution and watch the reaction and then maybe add something else until it explodes, or solidifies or evaporates. Perhaps that's it.

The policeman is writing everything down, only occasionally stopping to listen. I’m not sure I’m speaking, so I can’t guess what his notes say. Perhaps he’s written, ‘she smells of misery, fags and cheap coconut shampoo’, that’s what my ex said, before he left the second time. I haven’t had many dealings with the police or the law, not really; except when I was a kid and went with my boyfriend to court for his sentencing. I’d had to bunk off history, and was still in my school uniform so it should’ve been no surprise that it was reported to my social worker. My boyfriend sent me a visiting order to see him in prison, but I didn’t know what it was for so it went to waste and he called me a cunt while he cried from loneliness during his weekly phone call. I didn’t even get into trouble when I stabbed him, in self-defence obviously, because it hadn’t rained for a week and the threats he’d chalked on the pavement I walked on to school hadn’t washed away. But that was all so long ago that now I’m not really sure how to act. I’m not sure what to expect. I want to ask the policeman if it’s my fault she’s gone missing, but I don’t want to raise his suspicion, it can’t be my fault anyway, not really, that's just a habit of mine, to feel guilty.

I had a friend once who could read your fortune. She had narrow brown eyes and hips twice as wide as her shoulders, childbearing. ‘Your trouble,’ she said, when I threw the I Ching coins one more time, ‘is you want something for nothing.’

‘What does that mean?’ I said, showing her the symbols on the coins.

‘No idea,’ she shrugged, picking at the spots on her arms, ‘I wouldn’t trust them even if I did. Gemma nicked them from the hippy shop.’ Later I heard she moved to Middlesex and worked in a café. She wasn’t a very good fortune-teller. She said I’d have children, but she didn’t say anything about them being taken away. Or this.

He stands up, is putting away his notepad. I stand too, to be polite and walk him to the door. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says. I wave goodbye but he doesn’t turn back to look. Above him the sky is filling with clouds, bumpy and the same grey-purple as brains.  

amazon.co.uk/SO-DOVES-Heidi-James

Bluemoose Books

   

TEACHERS

1.DEAD TEACHERS

all
my
teachers
are
probably
dead
now

they all seemed 
about to retire 
all the time
back then

now theyre
sprawled in the council ground
like forgotten potatoes

or dust in urns on mantels
blended with polyester
and
assassinated
chipboard

those lords of the chalk
those pantomime villains
their
documented
influence
still
lurks
subliminal
in
my
mashup dna

and i can
only
remember
maybe 6 7 8 surnames
attached 
to
haircuts
acceptable violence
and
stationary cupboard rumour

or
plastic gloves
cos
of
a
chalk allergy


2. ABSENT TEACHERS

clearer
are
the memories
of
the
teachers union strikes
when
we
sat
there
waiting
and
no
teacher showed up

everyone kept the noise down
so no one would find out
and
id
have
35 mins or 1 hour 10
to
read or gaze out the window
safe inside a quiet conspiracy

or a head would walk in the door
grim faced
flustered
and
send
us
all
home

you never saw
30 odd kids
move so fast

out into the uncharted
daytime
of
cornershops
and fags


3. CRYING TEACHERS

and when a substitute teacher
was drafted in

new & young & terrified

half
the
class
would ramp up the smut and the swearing
to
see 
how quickly 
they could 
make them 
lose their rag
or
cry

the other half
laughed
them
on

till the tears flowed
and a proper teacher
would come in
and
make
us
all
feel bad

from community on pinterest

THE GAFFER TAPE OF HONESTY

time was
id drawn lines in my head

walls built by a child
from crumbling crayon

heavily plastered 
in the teenage trenches
of rough peer wars

reinforced
with the bullshit girders of adult steel
in
the
cash-on-a-friday pay days

( and if the decoration analogy
  is clumsy and pushed too far
  then
  its
  enough
  to
  say . . . )

id boxed everything in
everything nailed down

but id cross these lines
when i drank
and it was dark
and everything was mad
and tomorrow
was 
a
myth
away

patrolling these borders
in excellent inebriation
they
appeared
only 
like spiders webs
outlined in dew
and
spun
across
the
pub bog doorway

the forbidden was tempting
and id lift something
brazen and easy 

i was a sneak thief 
working in his own pockets 

and id blurt it out . . .

and no one noticed anything
mighty was happening at all

but in the morning
i
would
be
locked
in
a
journey of awful remembrance 
berating myself
down a black whirlpool
in
the
awful daylight
of
the
another bus commute 

but tho time patched 
time eroded too 

and it all collapsed like wet card

the walls a ramshackle cowboy build after all

and
i
was
free
to
breakdown on the rug
wailing into the phone
a dinner i didnt want forgotten and burnt
in
the
dirty dish kitchen

then it was the challenging task
of mending a busted tool box
with
busted 
tools

i used the gaffer tape of honesty
of lobotomised openness
of fm cliche love
and
i
let
the
busted
be

from mindyourdirt.com

MONDAY POPPADOMS

ELECTIONS AS A QUIZ
WAR AS A HEIST

time was i used to laugh
at
bush jr
at his cia daddy
at
that
whole skullfaced crowd
stinking it up
and
the
drinks
came
fast
back then
tripping
on
their own cool heels
and
i
sat
bug eyed mad and drunk
hooked into rolling news

i can hardly laugh now
only manage some kind of bark
like
my
throats
dried
up
cos its dawn again
and i see 
a firing squad
lining up
in the rags of mist

maybe
its
cos
of
age exhaustion and awful awareness

or
the snowflake compassion
thats expanding 
in my soft cabbage mind

and i wonder now
now i'm shy of headlines 
if
rolling
booze
is
the
only
sane
reaction
when your leaders are certifiable
or
worse

seem to work
for the
russians



COFFEE POP

he said 
he would come for a coffee at noon

so he came for a coffee 
at half past noon

and
we
sat
under
one
single
50 mile
contrail
like a chalk line
on
a
blackboard
we
had
sat in front of
struggling to learn french

50 thousand
years
ago


BEACH PAST POP

sat out in the low spring sun
in its low wattage
and residual chill
i 
am 
reminded
of being a kid
on englands windy beaches
forcing fun 
out the rockpools
and sand

searching for enid blyton caves

and waiting on the lunch rolls
the ice cream run
the seaside lights at night
and
a
pub
garden
with its mysterious free smell
of 
beer

from amazon.co.uk

TWOFER POP

1.

planes
leave
chalk
on
the
blueboard
of
the
sky


2.

old jeans
  its
  sad
  to see you 
  in the bin

worn thru 
  in 
  an 
  intimate
  place

old jeans goodbye

from icons.mysitemyway.com

HOMELESS BIOGRAPHY 1

homeless shoot homebrew undrugs 
into 
thumbtak tattoo arteries 

tracks
expand
like
chalk quarries uncovered industrial veins

homeless
only 
as concerned as we are with kettle limescale 

then
grow doves wings 
in 
grocers doorways

 

 from amazon.com