Posted on by authormcgowanblog

The Cruise

Peter, for years, saved to go on a cruise.

He decided on old Saint-Tropez.

He got on the boat, prayed, ‘Keep it afloat.

Let the whole trip be happy and gay.’

.

The boat, as it happened, was not all that good.

It sunk on the very first night.

Our Peter did cry, ‘Please, don’t let me die.

Redeem me from this awful plight.’

.

He managed to swim to an unknown dry land,

deprived of all that he’d brought.

Though he didn’t know then, a party of ten,

Would soon serve him a large cooking pot.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

Nothing My Thumbs Press

  • In Response to ‘Text’ by Carol Ann Duffy

.

Nothing my thumbs press,

will ever be heard.

At three in the morning,

My vision being blurred.

My tongue tastes of cotton,

And language is slurred.

My message goes out,

But no-one is stirred.

.

The verse that I sent out,

I tried to reword.

To speak out, in person,

I would have preferred.

I look at the message,

And think a cross word,

Throw it back in my pocket,

And go home, perturbed.

.

I wake in the morning,

My mouth is like curd.

My eardrums are banging,

Not one thing be heard.

I remember that last night,

My mind then disturbed.

Texting while puddled,

Should really be curbed.

.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

Death Poem

I
It was hot, that intense summer’s daytime,
The weather, close without reason or rhyme.
Skin slips off; the bodies before me thaw.
Escaping, where once it held; now withdraw.
Spiritual. Can murder be thus? Discuss.
Nature loves to take back what it gave us.
This feeling, it soaks me like delight.

II
I watch them as a passion enthrals me.
The body, degrading naturally.
It was wild, in the heat of the moment.
Not mutual. A true act of bestowment.
A romance, yet emotionless; endless.
The taste, too, I do find delicious.
I was alone and merely being playful.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog · 1 Comment

The Devil Take Ye (Lyrics)

Jack crept out, one dusky evening, as the snow wisped wild, unreasoning.

He sensed the subtle shift of air; that prophesised of plight, foursquare.

Yet dire need of drink he deemed, far from his warring wife. Indeed,

His britches held his beads of rose; a de-fence from his spouse, imposed.

.

In Bill’s Black Bull, he found his friends, already three-sheets. Stevie said,

‘Six shots, three beers, whisky and wine. Make sure to match and make good time.’

.

As Jack swilled – and swallowed fairly, he pondered on his precious Mary,

Who sat and scowled and warmed her wroth. The drink he drank was not enough.

The furious, fiery, fuming femme would box and bash and kick and crown him,

But in the foggy throws of froth, he deemed he did not care enough.

.

As Jack rode home, through dark and dim, the barkeep found Jack hadn’t paid him.

He and his haughty, hefty friends, took up and tracked Jack round a’ bends,

And dikes and dells and a’where else and planned to birch him with their belts.

Yet Jack did cycle, solemn, sure, and sang of all he saw and knew.

He harked of hills and birds of prey, and lively ladies laid in hay.

.

Then from the edge of paling eyes, he saw a site that held surprise;

A local teacher creeped and crept. Not on a single stick she stepped.

Jack slinked and snuck through sentient trees, then smelt an iffy, funky breeze.

It harkened to a hearth inhumed, which pungent, putrid death consumed.

.

And as he peered, through pale, blurred eyes, he stood there stunned, in such surprise,

For, round and round a ring of grass, danced every teacher, bare of arse,

To ever teach in Alloway. Behind that bush, Jack wished to stay.

.

And up above, a stage so rude, old Satan on a platform stood.

And as the devil danced and sang, he trapped and took Jack by the arm.

Old Satan snared him to the pyre, full of flames; ferocious fire.

.

Yet in that moment, man alive, those gathered gawped in such surprise.

The barkeep burst beyond the trees and shouted loud, ‘What like are these,

Old besoms bopping, twos and threes, in this clearing, if ye please?’

.

The devil jacked our fearful Jack, up to his hairy head and asked,

‘Is he for real or don’t he know – that I’m the devil, here to mow?’

.

It was then, Jack played his part and into Lucifer’s ear impart.

‘Convert yourself into some coin. I’ll tend it there, no more purloin,

And when you weigh it worth the joke, change thee back and have him choke.’

.

He then transformed, before Jack’s eyes, with a sudden, stature sacrifice.

Then, on the grass, there lay some gold, which Jack grasped up, the great freeload.

He placed it in his pocket, sure, beside his bless-ed beads, so pure.

The fiend’s firm form no more could alter. When trying to turn he flailed and faltered.

.

Jack took this chance and fortune fair, and left the barkeep blowing air,

And rife, the evil rallied round to strip and skin, and herd the hounds.

That barkeep now was less than best of meat and blood and bone and breath.

.

And all across the dikes and dells,

Out loud they rang,

Hell’s heinous bells.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

Annie-Belle

The snow fell softly as if the clouds themselves were unravelling. Ela stood outside Old Flannigan’s curiosity shop, peering through the frozen window with her threadbare shawl wrapped around her for warmth. She had taken her six-year-old twin daughters out for their daily walk. The three of them had lingered, captivated by what was displayed.

Ela glanced at Lolly and Belinda who were tugging at her skirt.

‘Mummy, mummy, mummy,’ they chorused, pointing through the window.

‘What is it?’ Ela inquired as she moved her gaze in line with their frantic steers.

As she searched numbly, her teeth chattering, a raggedy doll caught her eye. It was an ugly thing, around twenty-four inches tall. It appeared to be handmade with the cross-stitching askew around the neckline. Strands of wool had been crafted into straggly hair and its eyes were as big and round as a half-crown.

Ela’s heart broke.

Life had not been going well for her and the girls, recently. Their father had died a year previously. Six months later, Ela had lost the house and they had found themselves living in a shabby hostelry run by an unscrupulous landlord. It was no kind of life.

Ela had done her best but money was tight and the meagre seven shillings she received each week from cleaning the tavern was tied up in bills and groceries. Treats came all too seldom and she knew that the girls did not understand why.

Ela stared at the doll as Lolly and Belinda continued in their efforts to persuade. ‘Pleeeease, mummy,’ they called in unison, ‘please can we have it? We’ll never ask for anything else, ever again.’

Ela stared at the doll, knowing full-well that they would have ten more requests before bedtime. As the doll stole her focus, she felt a sense of unease come about her, her soul accusing her eyes for simply taking notice. It was not something that she herself would choose to bring into their home.

‘Do you not think it would be better to have one each?’ Ela tried.

‘No mummy,’ the girls chimed.

‘We want that one,’ Belinda added with Lolly nodding vigorously, ‘the one with the red hair, like ours.’

Lolly and Belinda had indeed been blessed with bright auburn hair, just like their father’s and adored their uniqueness. They believed themselves to be exclusive in this fact, not knowing anybody else who had hair of red.

Ela perused the other dolls in the window. ‘Look,’ she intimated, ‘that one’s hair is red and it’s prettier, too. Wouldn’t that be better?’

‘Noooo,’ they whined.

‘That’s just light brown,’ Belinda wailed again. ‘We want the red-haired one.’ The girls’ eyes started to well up. Their minds would not be changed.

Ela’s heart wept every time she had to deny the girls anything. She had secretly cried herself to sleep, on many occasion and it was probably this fact that pushed her to lead the girls into the dusty curiosity shop and hand over the required two shillings.

The shop itself was clutter incarnate, crammed full with all kinds of objects with no two items being alike. Dolls were there and old teddy bears; old locks and ragged socks; dark, worn paintings and armour from Hastings. There were opal rings and raven’s wings; once grand lockets and mannequin sockets. There were bottles and goggles and fossils and models; and even a few whips, snips, grips and bottled ships. It was a rare wonderland but Lolly and Belinda wanted nothing but their red-headed dolly.

As the old Irishman in full tweeds retired from behind the counter and made, slowly to retrieve the doll from the window, the girls bounced up and down on their toes.

‘Are you sure you want this one, so?’ the Irishman asked when he returned. ‘It’s not my best, to be sure.’

‘They are unwavering on the matter,’ Ela assured.

As the three of them trudged home through the ever-deepening snow, Lolly and Belinda held on tightly to an arm of the doll each as if scared she would be lost before they returned home. However, Ela was apprehensive, feeling a tingle down the back of her neck as if someone were following her. Every time she looked around, however, she saw no-one.

Lolly and Belinda came to love the doll over all their possessions, naming it Annie-Belle and taking her everywhere with them. This filled Ela’s heart with joy but there were times when she thought she heard a whisper, just on the verge of hearing; more felt than heard.

One day, exasperated at the state of the girl’s bedroom, Ela made to clear everything away. Toys, of which there were few, went into a small pine box under the bed. Books went back on their shelf. Clothes were then gathered, folded and stored away in an ancient sideboard.

When Ela had completed her task, she retrieved Annie-Belle from the corner of the room and placed her on the bed.

When Ela returned after making herself some tea, she went stiff, witnessing the now empty space on the bed. Her eyes darting around the room caused her to observe Annie-Belle sitting back in the corner again. How? Had Ela simply run through her mind the idea of placing the doll on the bed and not progressed to actually doing it? She must have done, for there, as clear as her love for her daughters, was the article in question, hunched up in the corner of the room. Ela’s skin crawled but she forced herself to think rationally.

Deciding to leave Annie-Belle where she was, Ela sidled out the room, pulling the door tightly behind her.

Over the next few weeks, Annie-Belle moved six times more, causing Ela to fear for her sanity. She could not believe that a doll could simply get up and walk about; so much so that she managed to convince herself that it was her own brain at fault.

Her mind in tatters, Ela eventually decided to dispose of the mangy doll. She had refused to take a match to Annie-Belle but did decide to throw her out that evening with the daily mess from the tavern.

Not long after falling asleep, Ela awoke with a start, followed by a scream. She jumped out of bed and, quickly lighting a candle, stared at the usually empty space beside where she slept. Annie-Belle sat there, more worn-out than ever and smelling like the old, discarded gravy from last night’s dinner. She was staring directly at Ela, Annie-Belle’s face somehow appearing more calculated than Ela had noticed before.

There was a peculiar look to the old doll which sent a shiver down Ela’s back. Grabbing her and storming through to the main room, Ela took one last look at the doll and tossed her purposefully onto the dying embers whence she burst into flames.

The moment was short-lived. After watching the flames engulf Annie-Belle and burn her to ash, Ela turned to see the doll resting casually on the only chair in the room. This could not be. Ela had seen the doll burn till there was nothing left. How could she be staring at Ela now with, Ela realised, a match in one hand and a matchbox in the other.

“You tried to take me away from them,’ said Annie-Belle in a childlike tone, her head leaning to one side. ‘That wasn’t very nice.”

She struck the match.

*

A few hours later when the bucket-chain finally won over against the flames. Lolly and Belinda sat on a wall in tears. A couple of local boys had pulled Ela out of the burning tavern but they were too late. Beside the girls, silently smug, Annie-Belle watched the show with detached amusement.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

One Foot in the Grave

Liam awoke with a start. His vision was blurred, his eyes cloying with sleep but he was just able to make out the off-white vision of a ceiling he did not recognise. When his senses began to return, he realised that he was lying, flat-out and naked on a cold, cold table.

Allowing panic to overtake him, Liam rolled off of the table, his throat setting free an involuntary shriek as he collapsed onto the stone floor as his legs collapsed under him. It was only due to base instinct that he managed to drag himself towards the edge of the room. Every movement was like a lesson in pain. He only stopped when he was able to slump down with his back against the wall and observe his surroundings.

He sat there, his breath visible before him, his bare backside resting on the smoothest brick floor he had seen outside of a public swimming pool. Liam clutched his good knee to his chest. The other one was having none of it. Every time he attempted to move, a searing pain would engulf his every sense.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a steel cabinet, stationed beside him. Liam reached out and wrapped his hand around a bandage and a slide-rule which lay fortuitously on top of it. He braced his knee with the slide-rule and used the bandage to bind, in the vane hope that he might be able to put a little weight on his burning limb.

His teeth chattered as he tried to think. Glancing down, Liam observed two lines of channel gratings, still wet from a recent cleaning. His eyes panned left and right as he took in his current environment. One whole wall was lined with steel drawers. They stood three high and seven wide. He estimated that each box was approximately two feet square.

He was beginning to come round a little more when his gaze was drawn to the metal table, sitting at the heart of the room. Iron bolts pinned it to the floor and atop of it was something that looked very much like a body bag.

A memory jarred his brain, then another and another, until his whole mind flooded with incoherent snapshots of prior events. He could not understand anything he saw and found himself powerless to stop it. His mind took in more and more memories, until he felt he could no longer weather the intense confusion. With his hands pressed tightly to his ears, he sought to prevent the inescapable eruption. At this point, his mind did not so much explode as implode. All the new information that his brain had taken in was now shot at great speed into the relevant slots of his temporal lobe.

As swiftly as it had begun, it ceased.

The gears in his head started to slow down; his muscles began to relax; his breathing slowed as he took in long, slow, deep breaths. As his eyes came gently back into focus, he carefully removed his hands from his ears.

Raising his head, he stared again, directly at what was most definitely a body bag; his body bag. All his memories were back where they should be and he could remember the whole sordid story. He now recalled why he was there. A light had come on in the upstairs regions of his brain.

His eyes were then drawn down to his frosty feet. Both of his big toes were black, through lack of blood. The numbness was sore but when he left that cold place and the feeling started to return to him, he was going to be in a great deal more pain than he had ever experienced before.

Pulling himself carefully to his good foot and bracing himself against the steel cabinet, he scanned the rest of the room. When he found what he was looking for, he hobbled inexpertly towards the far wall, grasping onto anything stable enough to sustain his weight. There was one moment where he had shifted his weight onto a trolly, only for it to roll away from him, causing his meagre nine stone body to crumple onto the wet floor. Liam screamed again in foul-mouthed protestation as he came into sharp contact with the brutal floor.

Glancing upwards, he saw a desk with the clear plastic drawers that had attracted his attention. He reached out and wrapped his numbing fingers around one leg of the desk and pulled himself towards it, cringing as he did. He propped himself up against the desk and hauled out each drawer in turn, the contents being strewn about the floor until Liam found what he was searching for.

Wrapping a rubber bind around his upper arm and tying it off, his thumb pressed down on the syringe as the unplumbed dose of morphine was driven into his swollen vein. He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed to what might be passed for relative normalcy. In a few minutes, he would feel like himself again.

A short ‘bzzz’ came from outside the room. A door had just been opened. Liam jumped instantly into the crouch position, the influence of the morphine already taking effect. Whatever was about to occur, he knew he would regret it the next day.

When the trainee doctor stepped into the room, his eyes were immediately drawn to the empty body bag. The next thing that grabbed his attention was the young, naked boy, crouching under the desk whom the young novice was quite certain had been dead, only ten minutes before.

Liam rushed at the newcomer like the hunchback of Notre-dame and pinned him against the wall. Gripping the unsuspecting student by the throat, Liam looked him up and down. A manic grin crossing his face, Liam whispered, ‘I need you to do me a wee favour.’

*

When he limped out of the hospital on his stolen crutches, Liam was dressed up in the novice’s blue scrubs, worn under a long black coat. Tipping the also newly acquired charcoal-grey flat-cap over his face, he breathed in the fresh air and made his way back into the world.

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

Death and the Diocesan

Bishop Julio Maria Pecori stood outside the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Istanbul. He watched without any semblance of emotion as his three-day old corpse was placed onto the cart.

The ice used to keep the body fresh, melting as he surveyed, dripped onto the golden dusty ground, producing dark-brown mud on contact. The old Bishop’s parishioners’ eyes were soaked with tears. Their cries of anguish, proffered unto the great God Jehovah, could be heard all over the district. His corpse would soon be taken away from the crypt, where it had been interred, before being carried out the city for burial.

As Julio observed, he could not feel the sun on his face nor the wind at his back. The ordinarily acute vanilla-like scent of freshly gathered crocuses and the sweet bitter-almond aroma of the locally grown apricots was beyond his reckoning. Also, the old familiar taste of the desert could no longer be identified. All that remained were sights and sound. Everything else was now as alien to him as the distant future.

Although illness had plagued him in recent times, Julio had never truly anticipated dying. He never had a spare moment to consider the notion. He had been a Vatican appointed Apostolic Vicariate in the city for quite some time and, even with the backlash of being a Roman Catholic seated in a predominantly Muslim country, he had relished his numerous seasons there. The city was large and one of the best arguments yet for ecumenicalism. The district was now awash with citizens hailing from several opposing religious faiths and beliefs. Julio’s own flock had come to relish his preaching and the hectic life of the desert metropolis had done him the world of good.

Julio meditated on his previous appointment before he had been accorded his commission to Istanbul, recalling the prolonged days he had expended, entrapped in well-aged libraries, the dust-filled air doing nothing for his sixty-year-old tar-lined lungs. It had become somewhat depressing. Julio had entered the church to afford the good news of Jesus Christ to the masses and when he had observed the correspondence that had arrived in his cell at the monastery, emblazoned with the official red wax seal of the Vatican, his heart had leaped with joy.

He had found his new position rather challenging when he had initially commenced his appointment but, over time, he managed to locate his feet and Istanbul had become a home away from home.

But that was then and this was after.

‘So,’ he said to a dark female figure by his side, ‘I guess this is it, then.’ It was more of a statement than a question.

‘I’m afraid so,’ the figure replied, solemnly. She was seven feet in height and had chosen to cloak herself in a robe that gave Julio’s untrained eyes the impression of pure darkness; not a deep black or the sky at night but true darkness that comes from existence inverted. She also held a scroll in one hand and a golden sickle in the other. Julio had been told that the scroll held the details regarding his fate; a list of his deeds, righteous and ill-advised alike. He had not dared read it himself.

‘I really did think I’d have a little more time,’ he continued.

‘No,’ the Angel of death expressed grimly, yet with no sound of malice in her low register. Her name was Azra’il and it was her duty to escort the recently deceased out of the world of man, whatever afterlife they were destined for.

Julio turned his eyes to the cart once more and exhaled, sadly. ‘They really have done me proud, I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘They’ve truly gone all out on the ceremony. I believe that they’re planning a commemoration this evening to send me on my way.’ He glanced up at Azra’il with more than a little hope in his eyes.

‘I’m afraid you will miss it,’ was all the reply he was tendered.

‘You know,’ Julio continued, ‘you’re not the most talkative of women, are you.’

‘No,’ the figure intimated again.

He let a sigh of surrender escape is lips. ‘I suppose we have to go quite soon, then.’

‘Indeed,’ Azra’il confirmed as she tapped a well-manicured fingernail on the sickle. ‘Now, in fact.’

Azra’il raised her scythe with a mind to cut the cord that binds but before she could, Julio cast his eyes back to the cart that carried his ice-sodden corpse and saw with disbelief as a sizable man, dishevelled and soiled from the desert, threw another body onto the back of the cart beside his. The old Bishop gawked as the peculiar man then leapt up onto the front of the cart and whipped the reins, roughly as he sped off in the direction of the city’s main gates.

‘Here,’ Julio shouted, ‘where’s he going with me?’

‘That is no longer your concern,’ Azra’il answered as she finally managed to cut the cord that restrained Julio to the world of man. With a gentle snap in the fabric of reality, both Azra’il and the Diocesan went. The last thing Julio saw, as the city faded into nothing, were his parishioners, not having witnessed the incident in question, searching around about them in a panic.

‘Nice people,’ Julio commented as the world washed-out around them, ‘but I do wonder how they’ll cope without me.’

Posted on by authormcgowanblog

A Dying Lament

.

Lilies resting on an empty pool.

What do they think?

What do they know?

What will they say when after I go?

.

Lilies resting on an empty pool.

What do they drink,

However slow,

Now that the water’s no’ water no more?

.

Lilies resting on an empty pool.

What cause do they link,

Reason being near death?

Can they reflect on not catching a breath?

.

Lilies resting on an empty pool.

What emptied that sink,

To trigger ordeal?

Will someone please tell me, what do they feel?