THERE ARE WAYS OF MY I

On the cusp of the dredges of time, I awoke lamp lit, blue faced and starved of oxygen, I remember, gasping and newborn that I was to be taken away. In the recesses of my memory, I can see surgeons, and the outside view of an abandoned hospital where I can hear muffled footsteps walking across a car park. I also recall a conversation with another newborn child, using facial expressions and eye movements. I have never found out if this was true, but for some reason I have always felt that it shouldn't concern me and I should never know this.

There are ways of my I, the pale vertices of my '86 form which move onward, outward into bare space.

The illegible bronze and gold jagged vehicles of my dreams move lightly over the surface of my day, calling me up, or knocking on my front door.

“Hello, It's the skeletal remains of leaves buried neatly in graves with their names on.” ...

… “Oh, yeah, and you've met the scent of metal haven't you?”

Places I have visited in my dreams often recur, sometimes old dreams get loaded up and played and I wander about in them more lucidly, picking stuff up and kicking dusty bits and bobs around. Maybe I'll sit down in an armchair or something. Depends where I am, I guess.

A sound. Louder. LOUDER quiet again. click and the tape ends.

The guy across the table (unfortunately a fairly generic detective) quietly flips over his notepad and puts his pencil behind his ear, he turns his back to me and looks at something on the wall.

I get up and walk out of the interrogation room. A large fan spins heavily, high above me, giving it a momentum which you could almost be certain would snap it off and would come whirling down onto some innocent person.

I briefly try to spin with it at the same speed so it looks motionless, then walk outside.

The breeze is strong but warm, dying down occasionally and the sun sporadically pokes it's head round the hurrying clouds. I put my hands into my pockets and head back home thinking it will probably be cold later.

Some kids are loitering around a stack of large wooden crates, they are wearing Hessian sacks printed with dark green writing and are embroidered with thick orange rope. They have big black boots on and are smoking coloured cigarettes. As I approach them I hear the crackling of fire gradually getting louder and the smell of motor oil gets stronger.

Suddenly, an arc of molten metal comes spurting out of a hole in the wall on my right and is quickly channeled into a series of clear pipes which are half embedded into the floor, the pipes seem to run down to the sea. Some liquid metal splashes out of the hole and lands on my shoe. I just start to feel the heat on my toe, before I panic and press down on the back of my shoe with my other foot to prize it off, then accidentally kick my shoe down the pipe.

Earlier I mentioned I was going home. This was not technically true.

The asphalt road under my one bare foot was dusted with bits of gravel which made it slightly painful to walk, but I kept going, onto my unnamed destination.