A commitment to quality

A little sequence here about the incident with the chicken sitting. 

In a pink shirt

I am expected to believe, I’m told now, that no sooner had we left the dwelling to take our little break, our short holiday on the field, that the hens we left at home began making a new and unworldly sound. My neighbour’d been there exactly two hours ‘taking care of them’ and  I am expected to believe, in this fractional moment, that the sound one of the hens made caused a portal. A portal to open up and he stands there, with his arms open and his face like a moon, saying don’t you think that portals must, inevitably exist? In a pink shirt that neither of us has ever seen him wear before. He said I said, don’t you think portals must inevitably exist, this time louder, and there were many of him, so many of him, but very briefly, I had to concede that I do believe that portals may exist. Good, he said, just one of him again now, that’s very good. Nelly, one of the favoured hens, reached for me with a long, elbowless arm, lifted me onto a crag and laughed all day. I looked down at them from the crag. I believed I would die on the crag. Sound up there, empty as a jug. A full hour both hot and cold were the same word. I tried to say it’s cold but the word was the same as hot, I could not find the language to separate them. I could not find the language for the hen with arms, or the hen with a cape, or the hen that caused the portal, howling forlornly the words of a song we once sang near the cornershop in days gone by perhaps we began all this in days gone by singing outside the cornershop with Sally, before her accident. With Beany. With Claude who we all suspected was lying whenever he claimed to be a former postal worker.

I feel over 

He laughed when I feel over. Do you remember?

I feel over onto my back

it was a slippery wet day,

so I got all shit up my back.

Then I slipped forwards onto my face

so I got my whole front covered in shit too. Inside my mouth.

All in the undertongue area the sinks

of my molars

He’uz up there in his dwelling,

looking through the window,

laughing at me.

Oh, I mean, he wasn’t being cruel.

He was laughing in a friendly way,

you know?

He allowed us to see him

laughing. He waved and asked if I was ok.

Just covered in chicken shit, I told him.

But I had lost the word feel

Not feel

The word after you have fallen over

I had lost it.

 A commitment to quality

 He offered it in two words, which I think he knew I would decline. But it was still the right thing to say, from his smart lips. A towel? It was the right thing for a neighbour to say, after all the rain, after the hail and the invasion of storm beetles, after the sludge came free of the terrace, all of it on me, and then a butt, I feel into the butt, of course I did. Headfirst into the butt where I had a false death, several times.

 Since we met this neighbour, the savaging I have taken, you wouldn’t believe. I could not describe it to you.

 A towel, no. You sure? Sure.

 He sliced the water away from my face with the blade of the palm of his hand. Thank you. He smacked me on the ass as I dashed home.

 We aren’t friends, exactly. No friends in the village. You just have shared things. You have to share the work, you share your time.

 You share other things, a normal sun, a pink and grey night, other things, green grass like plastic, other things, walks, hollering at new people, other things,

Like a commitment to quality.

Guidance

 Here’s how to make them feel calm.

You hold the tool

in this way,

Here’s another way to make them feel calm.

Touch your hat to them, be respectful

with the curl of your second and final finger speak slowly,

do not say fox.

Do not say Claymation.

The hens must feel harmonious or they’ll trammel you, peck at your sweet hands,

Be upon you in a second,

Take away your holy dignity,

A raging hen can reduce your whole week to a stump,

A morbid hen can occupy you unendingly in the recovery position,

Put you back in a boy’s bedroom

with a red cock and a saggy curtain,

If you don’t know how to control yourself,

you end up letting one out. And it will be off.

There’s no wire or anything

to stop them.

They will be gone, to the park, and then into the mist.

Imagine a hen in that mist! Clucking at the new arrivals! You

A fool on your own

In the fucking garden.

Meet them

 This one reminds me of how we would wait in the back of the car while father went into the petrol station. He held up sweets and we had to scream, yes or no, and he would hold his hand to his ear to pretend he did not know what we were saying.

This one is named for how you smell of liquid wood. For your squeezed eyes.

This one reminds me of how I know, without ever having drunk it, the fluid taste from a used tobacco pipe, the slip of the tar in the throat, cold spit, and so much of it, enough to plug the full mouth and still eek down the full gullet.

We call this one thin lizzah, see the strut? Additional joints allow this, and eggs like fat pure pearls.

See the feathers? Like a day when you forgot your keys and broke into the garage to keep out of the rain, and got hard reading the Buddha of Suburbia in the dark, stacked upon the divorce furniture.

Record of a neighbour

At one o clock, seen scowling, but possibly squinting, holding a shopping bag with two or three products. One seems to be a mango. The others are anyone’s guess.  At three o clock heading out again. Sunday, the entire day, spreading and packaging toast, in freezer bags, who does this? Monday, he says something friendly as he departs, he sets right a bin, and yet I think of his frozen toast and wonder who else can see through his act. Am told that he is unavailable to speak to at his office. He does not take client calls, I am told.

Returns home in the gloom, sweat has pressed his hair close to his head. Was he wearing a hat? It has been a hot day, perhaps on public transport he was crushed and dampened in this way. Or he has been licked by something!

Thursday, a letter not delivered properly tells me he is in fabulous levels of debt. He owes all over town! Although, it also says, he regularly meets his direct debit obligations. But for how long?

He speaks on the phone for two hours on the low wall at the front of my house, not just to one person but to several, all the while opening and drinking cans from a blue plastic bag. He keeps saying the word trust, but not clear in which context. Looks like he is telling the same story over and over again. 

We waved at each other on the street today.

I hear he has been promoted at work – there is a party at his house, with several people in office clothes late on Friday night. I hear the sound of them, up past three in the morning. At midday, a couple of them in the clothes from the night before shuffling out, whispering goodbye, one of them grunts and lights a cigarette that stinks up the whole street.

Does not leave for work on Monday or Tuesday. Am told he suffers from sciatica by the neighbour on the other side. She is convinced everyone suffers from sciatica. Why can’t she just say back ache like normal people?

He has been dreaming, lately, of a party, I’m sure, in which I am there and he is there, and we are in each other’s dream of this party. He walks past me, he is wearing a mauve blouse, he explains why he is leaving, and I say the party? Or leaving leaving? But by then, my mouth is a hutch again.

Always I wake up with a hutch for a mouth. And I go to work with it, and consider my neighbour all day long, all the money he owes, his sweaty head, his addictions, and his plans to move far away.