Mr Crook's twisted figure contorted against the brown bricked wall, a zig-zagging shape of a strange figure, bent back. His protruding nose stuck out like a hawks, lit up by the closest lamplight, and his hawk eyes and sharpened thin eyebrows fell back, hunters in the shadows.  His arm reached down holding onto his stick, his breath gasping as it did so. He was weak, twisted. Anger feeding a criminal mindset. His stern gaze retreated towards the vanishing moon. He, merely a rotting crow, never dared meet the sun's glare though it,  

thirsted. 

It looked to bathe any object below it in it's glow, to light up the shadows behind the alleyways, to pull the cloak from the surface. Mr Crook, a hidden enemy, a once friend, embodied both that which was hatred and that which was the opposite of that. Mr Crook remained the sun's number one goal, and yet was firmly acquainted by its enemies lightning strike.  
 
The moon.
The brother of the sun, icey, frosty, light-footed. It dances in the night sky, shimming as glowing light shot down from it's arms into the night. It captured Mr Crook and those of the nocturnal creatures, captivated them with a swoop from the feet. They were it's shadowy hunters, roaming across the earth.
It's nightmare knights. It's poisoned potion.

The planets tug of war evoked  for years, continuous in it's patterning, shaking the planets life, yin and yang, for Mr Crook. His jagged component of a body roams corners, always still  looking, checking, looking. Mr Crook, the charger of the sun, the moon, the fight. Mr Crook,  the fuel of life. 

“I’d be a lightbulb,” she said. “Yes, a lightbulb, full of light yet with an ability to be dark. A device able to transform into two binary opposites. Dark and light, Yes that’s me.” She gave a smile. “Sometimes I need a hand to flick the switch you know? Sometimes I need assistance to help me be bright again…”

Concrete feet and battered wings,
Make no entrance for defeat,
For when your fluttering fleat of ships arrived,
They sailed me to the shore,
And that I adore.

Oh how the sun glinted and shone,
As my heart which was tied up. Tied down.
It unwrapped and came undone.
You were the one.

With teeth glittering gold, And chattering in bitter cold, Icey kissed thighs, And lust in our eyes, with a fire a rage, And a storm astray , Did not we release our hearts from a cage, And wasn’t that, my love, our day?
 

He fell at my feet and I wriggled, twisted as I reached out my arm and he clenched onto me, his eagle claw.

Avant Garde Artist

And in your eyes, she twisted and wriggled. A snake slithering through the path in front of you. She, an electrically charged molecule that shook and exploded, a whole planet hotter than mars, a hiss with a sting. A bite with delight.

Through these eyes the picture grew through mist. Extended through fingertips. Fell upon paper, and with a swish what the artist had drawn, became what we once had mourned.

That the day we saw beauty like a thorn.

The Class

It had been my old friend Louise who had persuaded me to take the class. Although at first unsure whether the experience would be enjoyable, it didn’t take me long to decide. Tuesday morning soon arrived and I found myself walking down the dreary streets trying to follow the scrawled directions on the crinkled paper clenched between my fingers. I couldn’t remember how I could have forgotten where it was. I couldn’t remember how I’d forgotten my memory.

 It was a most unwelcoming setting. Tall brass gates leered at me as I entered the grounds not knowing if I wanted to turn back. Not knowing if I could. The building was large, its towers of grey bricks contrasted grotesquely against the blue skies, while I drifted towards the entrance. My feet led me without my brain sending any signal. I did not need to think about where I was going. My memories flooded back into my mind in a flash.

      Harsh laughs. Glinting teeth.  A knock to the head. Pointing. Staring. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t. He couldn’t. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t.

 The future wasn’t all that better. Average grades, a job at the old post office.... wrinkles. I make myself laugh. The seat pulled out in front of me and down I sat. A wide eyed woman with blonde hair, complete with grey roots, stood casually in front of me. The teacher.

    Awful behaviour. Bad attitude. Doesn’t seem to care about the work. Unwilling to try hard. Won’t get anywhere. Nowhere.

 “Today we will start with the basics.” she spoke, tapping the board with her pen, “I am Mrs Florentine; Mr Grimsby is stuck in traffic so I will be teaching you today.” Thank god. My sudden flash of memory told me that Mr Grimsby wouldn’t be the most pleasurable person to be of acquaintance to.

 Mrs Florentine was writing things now. My pen darted across my paper enthusiastically taking notes. I wasn’t sure what the rest of the class was doing. I gazed around counting, five women and two men. None of whom I recognised.

“Everyone knows who you are. ”

I watched for a while. Three of the girls were huddled in the corner, whispering together, their eyes shooting across the room ready to fall on their next victim. The two boys sat apart, tapping their pens onto the paper, wracking their brains. One girl sat near them twirling her hair and gazing into space, her paintbrush gripped tightly in the palm of her hand. The last girl sat at the back staring coldly, blindly, at the ornament we were meant to be sketching. Her thick black hair fell over her face, shading her watery eyes.

*You won’t be able to hide.”

The clock ticked as I sketched hopelessly, trying to make the lines on my page resemble the ornament before me. Why did I bother? My already drifting concentration was even more disturbed by the entry of a latecomer. The wooden doors eased open with a creak as a slouched figure entered.

“You’re always going to be fat and ugly.” He told me -Jordan Hansen.

The small man tottered in, his shaky hand firmly gripping onto his walking stick. “Take a seat.” Mrs Florentine demanded. The man showed no recognition of hearing her voice, his eyes simply trailed along the floor. He took a seat to my left and finally looked up with sunken eyes, from beneath a mountain of prematurely grey tousled hair. “Good afternoon Mr Hansen.”

Jordan Hansen.

Class dismissed.

Summer beach

  July. The beach is a storm of people, their tanned bodies scattered across the sand already burnt from the sun’s poisonous glare. Sandcastles line the middle of the beach, like soldiers prepared for brutal battling, indifferent to the screaming children pacing around them.

       In the background the crowded high street is full of shoppers, and the shoppers are dashing in and out of the many odd little shops before racing each other back to the sandy floor. The parents’ noisy mutterings, children’s joyful squeals, squawking seagulls and swimmers splashes’ all greet me as I stroll down the beach. I watch the sun’s reflection glitter in the sea, showering the many swimmers in its sparkle.

       Waddling about in front of me, small children dash in and out through the maze of sandcastles, devouring their melting ice-cream in a dozen of small bites. By my feet litter lays, scattered across the floor in messy piles, left for some poor person to pick up later.

       I walk forward, pushing past the grumbling strangers and stepping over the lazy sun bathers and piles of litter, until I reach the sea. I remove my flip flops and let the tingly cold salty sea water drench them. To my right I spy a group of climbers shimming up the side of the rugged rocks. They pull on their ropes, pausing every now and then to make the important decision of where to place their feet, whilst I watch, a dot on their landscape, soaking its feet in the chilly waves beneath them.

      A welcoming gust of cool wind ruffles through my hair as I gaze at the magnificent sea, now oblivious to the wittering behind me. Swimmers cling on to their floats, fighting the waves that crash over them. Children run together into the sea, their armband wrapped tightly around their skin, like vibrant inflatable bracelets. Behind them, somewhere within the blur of the busy beach, I spot their parents watching them intently, as though they are a pair of hawks eyeing up their pray. Annoyed, the pair of hawks glide to a new spot to perch on the rocky wall, whilst the elderly couple crawl by, innocently munching on their vinegary fish and chips.

        I notice the fish and chip van parked behind the rugged rocks and my nose picks up the scent of the vinegar spread generously on another family’s chips. Another icy cool wave of the sea soaks my feet, distracting me from my sudden hunger. Straight ahead I watch the tourist boats cruising along the blue depths, its tiresome passengers pretending to be interested in the tour guide’s informative speech.

          Time passes quickly as I bathe my feet, dreaming vividly of magical mermaids and colourful fish. The sun lowers its position in the clear blue sky, a king retiring from his throne for another night, and I lift my feet out of the water and stroll back down the quieter beach, away from the sandy floor beneath me.

Winter Beach

           Cold scattered snow is all that greets me as I take a first few steps onto the crispy surface below me. Its cold white body lies in layers across the rocks and sand, like icing on a Christmas cake. There is not a murmur, no sign of life, as my eyes avert across the lonesome land. The grey sea waves at me as I continue forward, stumbling over the rocky ground. I reach out a greeting hand and shocked, quickly remove it, unsurprised but still stunned at its coldness. Layers of groggy unloved depths leer back at me, angry and confused by people’s strange reactions to it, like a once loved puppy scolded for growing into an old tiresome dog.   

              But the sea is not completely alone. Squinting far to my left I make out an approaching shadow. It moves drearily towards me, each step seemingly slower than the previous. In front of it a dog shaped shadow totters eagerly from left to right, its nose covered in snow from the icy floors.

            Fixated on the foggy shadows approaching me I watch, ignoring the angered sea. A short man with a bitter expression emerges from my left, clinching onto his fluttering coat. His dog totters on, oblivious to his owner and oblivious to the idea of manners as he licks my shoe. With a grunt of his owner the dog vanishes, leaving me alienated once again.

           The breeze of the wind is my only companion as I avert back to staring at the icy waves. I remember its coldness and imagine the summer swimmers attempting to glide through its icy waves. The dull skies cover the beach in a blanket of clouds, like your box of summer toys packed away, left simply to pick up the dust.

          Droplets of rain drip on the top of my head, whilst the rough sea crashes against the rocks, spluttering droplets of water over the nearby sand. Glancing around the wide open area, the muted colours and the desolate sea, the eeriness of the place hits me, like a hidden stone in a snowball, exploding with a crash.

           The loud silence bangs against my ear drums as the wind ruffles through my coat, a pickpocket desperate to find something worthy of stealing. I clamber over the sharp heavy rocks, heading back to my starting point, no longer feeling trapped in the miserable place. Droplets drip harder from the sky, wet tears evaporating into a scuffled tissue. My pace quickens as I step over the last few rocks. Behind me the lonely sea’s waves crash half-heartedly with disintegrating anger, as I continue forward, back to the harmless reality of the tarmac road. The sea’s waves ring in my ears, as it fades away, a forgotten friend drifting into the distance.

I knew you were under there.

Twisting. Tangled. I spun around my lions chase.
And then we stood there two soldiers. Glinting eye. Your haste.
Oh how your deer legs roamed, and how I bowed my head forward,
How we set out our snakes hiss and how I bruised your neck with teeth.
Battles bruise, our foreign cruise.

And we stood forward, and wrestled til I pulled from your grasp.
Dancing shoots from my veins,
Your heart entranced. And your eyes hid under dreary hoods and beer and tonic and flooding ideas, ‘oh i should’s’
Our battle bruising and bloody, but still,
Around and around did we dance,
Never quit our butterfly trance.

In the simplest terminology.

Her eyes are thunderstorms.
Lit up like a red sky,
She sees storms as mountaintops,
That swoop and make her fly

Her heart is a lioncage,
Inside it we don’t know what roams free
She is everything I want though
All that I can see.

True life I know is beautiful,
True love only pure,
From widened lids and baffling twists ,
Circumstance makes me delve for more.
 

She.

She was bold. Strong, a fighter with chopped up hair. Her wild roaming eyes glinted with kohl as she ran under moonlight. I watched as I saw the arch of her back, and the growling moan draw out from her alike to a sigh. Watched as her wrath filled body twisted and turned along Forgate Street.

 I watched often, did I. I was a watcher, a ghost in a shallow constraining room, behind the glass panel, the arched window. My eyes deeply carved black circles and my senses to the quality any good hunters should be. Yet I has been constrained. Tugged at, pushed away, from her, from my realm. Restricted from reaching the cobbled path. 

Dagger through the heart.

 Watching gave a sense of something to me yet still.  And though chained to chains I maybe in a few seconds would feel like I could see again. Watching, the best inspiration to me. I'd taste it, see it, almost touch. Freedom was still out there for me. 

And travelling delicate through our spines. A singular spark fell and


Fell. Reaching the pits of our tiny hearts.

Midas.

Mrs Midas, My love.
I write to you my apology,
I had touched the yellowed pear and I had seen it turn to gold,
I had seen the glimmering furnishings light up our abode,
And my chair, I turned it into my throne.
I had felt the power of a gift shoot to my head from fingertips.
Oh, how power turned my soul to a shallow pit.

So now I am sat surrounded by my golden prizes,
Glimmering statues around a greying hungered figure that has become myself,
And I write to you out of regret,
Regret of greed, of cursed wealth,
And how now I know all these riches that are gold, are not obtaining of worth to me you hold.
 

Trapped.

Bared and torn I reached out an inadequate arm through rounded metal strips to reach this to you. And as I am caged still my emotion is not and it runs wild like the hunting instinct of a lion, wild and free it roams to you.

Hurricane.
A entanglement of desires, hopes and dreams, a stem of a Rose from behind a forest of leaves.
You were.

What left my eyes wide alit?, what left my heart in it’s paralytic fit?

You did.

Voices Project.
Old heart.
Love is what makes the heart young and what makes being alive worthwhile. Meeting in the 20s I remember, he led me onto the floor. I had ringlets then, now my face and skin curls instead, I a monstrosity of my years remain unchanging throughout this. The skip in my heart shows me I can have youth again.

Young heart.
I sit there, crayons in my hands, hair scrunched in braids over my shoulders, tissue on standby for spillages. You stand there also, and you are the tall tall tree that hovers above me. Always near, and always covering me in your blanket of shadow. I am minuscular under this shelter of your branches, together we are the perfection of companionship. You, the shade from the rain and I, the glue of pieces of your broken spirit, the picker-upper of leaves that break off from you. The tie of purpose in your heart.

Abandonment.
I crawl. Scream. Scratch. Tunnels and doorways and train-rides I travel I’m the depth of the night. Hands clawed like a wolf I am outstretched and I stop nowhere.

Voice of Enchantment.
She spoke to me. Crystal clear voice of light and air. Her body shuddered forward as the words fell out and her heart leaped as she spilt out the words ‘love conquers all.’

Stacks and stacks of books her hands flicked through as I gazed onwards. I saw the flick of her nose, the protruding veins in her neck, pumping blood furiously around her body. Her eyes focused and filled with intent, yet remaining un-spotting of me every-time. I was a still child in a game of hide and seek in which I mustn’t grow fed up of playing. The reaching out of my heart I had learnt to stop with time. I was simply here to look, not touch. I heard the breath release from her mouth in its small gasps. I knew straight away, she was trying to calm herself. ‘You paranoid girl’ I heard the voice in her head, every detail, every molecule, every cell was open for my interpretation, for my acknowledgement. Yet her soul, a treasurable rarity, findable only somewhere admist her being, was hardly heard. Glimpses of it arose time to time. Magical sparks unveiling true nature. Isolated she was who she is.

Yet who am I you ask?, I am the watcher.

The Magician.

Did you ever hear of the story of the unknown magician?
“It starts like this," my grandfather’s voice stated to me. I snuggled up closer, against the greying man, my grandfather. He sat and his white beard was protruding over textured covers and bedspreads he clenched around him. My grandfather's mouth rattled out words of adventure. 
“Isn’t it funny things come back to us, and when we are not looking as well” he said to conclude the story, and then he had fallen asleep.
I sat upright though, thinking isn’t it funny how my grandfather could come out with such wisdom filled stories, and then just sleep, like nothing had happened. Like nothing had changed. Life does that too you right, makes you grow unexpectedly. 
 
So now, I guess you’re wondering, so here’s how it went. There was a boy. Young, bright, violent .Bang bang bang. The shots from his toy gun could be heard for miles and miles around the stretch of land that surrounded his abadnoned abode. Everyday the boy’s mother would carry him out (he was most unwilling to oblige to things he did not want to do) and carry him off to the car for school. School. It was a big place and here for many years was where the boy grew taller. He found it strange, he seemingly had grown inches over months, how strange a ability of the human body to grow whilst we don’t notice. 
Gowth was a unseemingly interesting facts of life to the boy who could also of been described as ‘interesting’, the children at the school around him would laugh and laugh quite often at his weird ideas. Baffling concepts in his head all day long made him vulnerable to spitting out what was often considered nonsense. It was when he had told his mum about his fascination with frogs and how they could  be considered as being under the  'flying creatures' category (the ones he saw could leap the length of whole 30cm rulers) it was realised that the boy was not like other kids.

  He, not like other kids, had strange ideas in his head of which they did not uphold. This was where I had interrupted my grandfather’s story, which he did not often like, ‘So this was a boy who was an outsider?' I had said bravely. My grandfather’s response? a frown, and then an answer. “No, not an outsider the boy was an adventurer. It is where an observer makes a mistake you see, they, by watching do not get experience. You can absorb only so much information. By joining in, a person gains so much more.”
Next a continuation, ‘The boy was brought strange gifts, or at least gifts which were uncommon, his friends got bikes, action men, sweets, toy guns, and he was the recipient of magnifying glasses, books about adventures and maps. One year he got a magician’s hat.
The boy liked to think that the magicians hat could transport him anywhere, uninterested in the traditional trickery of magic the boy would instead use the hat as a transport tool. All he had to do was place the hat on his head and bang. He was there. 
He found many different places he could go and many differing adventures he could have. He fought battles oversea, him along with his friends. Them with their toy guns assisting him often. 
Again, I interrupt. “But he didn’t really go anywhere?”
“No” my grandfather answered. “He did. In his mind.” 
Years later after the wars were fought and the boy grew up and married and such he went routing back through his cupboards on those days that you do, feeling the call of nostalgia. He found there stacks of boxes, photo frames enlaced with a thin dust and, no hat.
It was a mystery. The hat was not found.
I couldn’t help interrupting here again, “Not ever?”
My grandfather had smiled. And that, was when I was told, that yes the hat did come around, yes. One year the boy found himself on a stage, performing a trick and as the crowd roared as the bunny vanished, he called back the bunny to the room and found himself with a hat instead. My grandfather did not explain how when I interrupted here, just smiling knowingly. The story ended with a bow forward, and the sound of colliding hands.

A chime of the old grandfather clock had ended the end of this. My grandfather slept and I sat and here we are, and here we were, full circle.  
 

He fell at my feet and I wriggled, twisted as I reached out my arm and he clenched onto me, his eagle claw.