“There is a great pestilence on this land son. A plague of locusts. And imagine this cloud flies from a fractal in their collective brain son, it resembles a funnel, a funnel of filthy locusts coming from one place. They’re all the same at the top.”
“Ab uno disce omnes, Dad,” I said sarcastically.
“They’re scared,” he said. “Oh, make no mistake, they’re running scared.”
I was never sure who “they” were, but had an innate belief that “they” indeed existed.
“Precise time hunts me down,” he said. "My bush is rustled by the second hands. My leaves are my fear of ignorance.
But I have forged a weapon! (he stepped up on the couch)
My foil is my disdain for the cruel briefness of our time.
Who am I to fight and how, you ask.
Can I spill the sand that others captured and if so, will my egg still boil?
Well, time can’t photograph this thrust. And I will thrust, compulsive me, even if my beginnings have already dictated the outcome.”
His head dipped, “Yes, I lost when I started with that glimpse of triangular shadows, sounds of ticks and losing the feeling in my cold brass hands. But, dum spiro, spero, son. Dum spiro spero.”
“Dad,” I said, “You’ve gone mental, you’re not making any sense for a man that works in a factory. Have you been spiked with junk? Keep this up and you’ll regret it.”
“You snap out of it!” he shouted, “Who are you to judge?”
“Judge a flower, in a broken hand, on a child, in a chair of steel. Or a good-willed, misled man of God without the power to heal. Judge a vicious widow, razor-tongued, walloped when a wife or stale but passionate artist, in a storeroom for his life. Judge a lover lost her fervour but following her heart. As if to judge were power at all when we can’t choose when to part.”
He shifted over to the drinks cabinet where we kept the Advocaat and whisky, some glasses and the Communist Manifesto. I shuffled to the door where, years before, he had rustled up a makeshift swing with rope and a polished plank screwed into the door frame. I blocked the passage to expel any ideas he may get about making a sharp exit and realised that he was swaying wildly.
“You are drunk,” I said viciously.
“So are you,” he replied.
I swiftly jumped over towards him and swung down the laminated chipboard door of the cabinet. I grabbed the half-empty bottle of single malt and took an aggressive slug from the neck. Cold tea.
“It’s a good job you’re hammered,” I said. “It’ll go some way to numbing the pain.”
“No longer you need,” he said slowly, while lighting a fag. “You need no more success than to be. May the righteousness that drives you, stay with you and continue.
Hope exists linked to your arm and grins alongside your own amusement. To see your worth laugh winds up the clockwork poet in me. To hear you puts the oceans to silence. Energies and forces confuse us in awe son, but to turn the tables, we need only breathe. Worth it you are so be merry my son, be merry,”
“That Yoda filth is the last straw Father,” I said calmly. “I‘m going to punch you as hard as I can in the guts, then I…”
I grabbed the Advocaat whilst maintaining this derisive eye-contact.
“I’ll have this,” I said. “And I’m taking your Old Spice, too.”
I slugged him with an uppercut in the solar plexus and watched him double to the floor.
“The weirder you are, the stranger you fall, Dad, remember Chef?”
He struggled to breathe and his speech was now broken as he wept, “But son, the ink drawn on the paper can’t set you Free. You said that yourself. Humble yourself now, substantiate your existence. We both read that. A centralized body of control will tell you when. I fed all of that, son.
Ethical is too abstract, the black nonsense of contradiction thrives. You’re just confused, but pure independence can’t come, Stupid, they’ll get you first. You’re used. Control has answers, face it and embrace it. You’re already used and abused beyond the point. What plot are you trying to use? Pain, shame,? Maim and gain? Pavlov’s flame? Tame and train? Distance from yourself is a fatal game. Be simple, near. Words cloud, people shroud. Be clear. Dictating emerges not from Wisdom, but Fear.”
“I’ve had it, Dad. I've had enough of you,” I slurred and staggered to the garden to cut and strip a good bendy whippy stick. “Cui bono? Cui bono?” I mumbled, as I lit another cigarette and stumbled.
No comments:
Post a Comment