The Past - legs-up-to-there and posh-as-you-like

The Past was there - on the bench, back the way we had come....

It was sitting there - still somehow calling us as we sat and ate sandwiches and shared shit cheap diesel wine from the bottle.

So, as we walked back that way we spoke about how we might help the Past spend its time (so much time and not a nice place to spend it) - perhaps buy it a sandwich too (it certainly wasn't getting any of our wine).

So you, all legs-up-to-here and posh-as-you-like walked up to the Past and went to offer it a snack - but you recoiled - stepped back - revolted - that Past, on that bench, just around the corner from Smithfield had its cock out, wanking at the passers by.

Iron Hat

One night while I was walking all out and alone a man in an iron hat came along and told me, all in song, about his life - well so far, at least. 

It was a long tail, twisted and hairy, and tufted at the end and, as it swished from side to side, odd odes and never-heards came listening bound.

Some words were puddles, big ones, with ducks. Some words were horses, they thundered on the hard ground. And as he sang he tapped out a salsa beat with a bleach clean ulna bone, from a long departed monkey friend, upon the brim of his iron hat.

And i know you are wondering how the story goes, id tell you nothing more for tupence and not a penny less. For more id tell you twice as much - settle down upon this bench. Wait, feel the rain falling in your hair, shut eyes, still your mind. Here's nothing, think nothing of it, its a gift from me to you

Dance yourself dizzy

His own words silenced - cornered. 

Torn apart with fear he grabbed his nearest weapon. 

Brandishing his wife, he let her rip with her wit.

4 floors below, knee deep in lurid dancing, a brace of strutters bopped - stopped.

Caught in time, no rhythm just rhyme.

Paused to hear the cries from above.

The witty retorts, savage words cutting. 

There, on the dance floor, fingers in their ears they danced themselves dizzy and banned all thoughts of men and wives and voices.

"I have a horrid feeling that, like the concept of enlightenment, few people will ever truly know life outside my arse."

Mid-morning Leyton, just past 1986

All wrapped up in cloth, stuffed in a box, under the stairs, smelling of must, we found him. 

Unwrapped, he stood stiffly, blinked then eyed us - one by one by one - as he wound the watch on his wrist. 

We had been looking for chapatti flour, we had not lost that, it was where it was supposed to have been, in the dustbin, with its scoop and all. No, the box was the oddity. Too large for its space, too large to have always been there unseen, with dust befitting its situation.

 . ."its time I left," that is all he said, near upending the bin in his haste, and pushed past us. He lifted his arms, as he squashed through the bikes and our junk in the passageway, as if trying to avoid soaking his sleeves while wading.

And he was gone down the street, past the bins and dead cars and trolleys. Dust devils blowing through the chapatti flour, mid-morning Leyton, just past 1986.