Unrequited Love, Muddled, College Style
Unrequited Love, Muddled, College Style
“Oh, I just remembered!” His eyes light up with something recovered from deep within his memories of last night. “You scored that blonde chick, pretty fucking hot.”
“Yeah. I’m an absolute legend.” This really is the kind of thing that lads say to each other. However, these conversations operate on different levels. There’s what is said and then there’s the unsaid. The unsaid is something else entirely.
“We were very drunk last night, Dionysus filled our hearts. I saw you with that beautiful blonde girl. What are your feelings on that matter?” He notices my gaze fall towards the ground before I answer.
“That beautiful blonde girl was Herself, the one who has been the primary object of my humble desires ever since the first time that my eyes met hers. Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? I had almost left those seemingly unrequited feelings behind me, looking at pastures new. But then, of course, Dionysus stirred and Apollo saw our lips meet.” He understands and nods.
“Do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine. Alcohol, my friend, makes the lady loose, and of course you can only wonder if there is anything real behind the encounter. I know you too well; you are not going to try to find out. You are emotionally introverted, unable to take affirmative action. You are scared of what you would hear. You’ll write something obtuse about it and wait in hope for the day that she reads it and realises that it was you she loved the whole time.”
That is basically what is unsaid, lying directly underneath what is actually said.
Working Title, The Sod
- This is the first paragraph of what will be my East of Eden, the thing I am most proud of, the thing that some lucky publisher will get and print within the year. Publish it for goodness’ sake.
The Sod
In a little din and a little light, it was a cellar, he danced awkwardly and she danced quite well, the two together making a pair of connected arms. They connected through the hands and through the clasping clasped fingers. Although he was uncomfortable with the action of moving himself to rhythms, the situation was, on the whole, agreeable to him. They moved back and forth and in some instances around with the room to the left or right, indeed backwards and forwards also featured, but for the most part they moved together and yes he was too conscious but he was functioning in the manner appropriate to the situation. Another hearty swell of foaming lager or a little whiskey may have seen him forget himself a little further, into a haze more of himself where the consideration of self falls away, but the momentary bravado that inspired his asking her vertical in the first place had confounded itself by now. To find another sip would mean parting at this point, and parting would sever the current reward from the initial deed, betraying the previous deed, done in itself out of a harsh rush of a muck water American dribble that he had only lashed down his neck to escape the sitting and the speaking.
Love’s Theme or, The Jar or, Sisyphus
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“Small drop.”
Two glasses. Seared like a pan of cider on a high heat. Necked by a large grey stone with a drinking hole and a separate mouth to create noise, permanent distraction from the permanent slurp. An old grey stone digeridoo that drank gold and spouted shite from the ropes until blown over them and it all stops.
“Do you see you there, I can tell you’re a man after me own heart.”
And he’d collapse on the bar and shout holy jaysus mother. He would. No luck yet, he’s only searing. And the pints were two, and the pints were too big for her hands. And I winked with one eye as I winked with the other, and said it’d be alright because there were two of us and two pints and that I’d get the next ones, which meant that there’d of course be next ones. And in this dark you wouldn’t know what could happen if that pink little cheek came near me. I’d bite it off in sweet love, like a maniacal butterfly, and there’d be nothing left and it’d be mine forever. I’d eat it up, or put it in a jar and admire it when I was old and searing cider in a pan for Dave and me, or just for Dave because I’d hardly get that far. He’s eighty but he’s going up, and I’m a quarter that and I’m going off, by the look of me.
Six pints of cider at the table and now I have Arthur in front of me telling me I never was such a bold boy as when I was sober. I’m more calculated then he says, like a sober calculator, and he doesn’t trust technology. It might be Arthur’s influence but I swear I’m sitting across from several women all staring at me in mild disgust and I blink and they’re gone so I decide to go home but not before a -
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“A drop.”
- and a pint for the road. One for me and one for herself there with the small hands that’d fit in mine so well if only they reached across the table. Sure, to have it that way she’d need fierce long arms and the hands wouldn’t look so well. Imagine the hand of a child on the arms of a tall man, no, not at all at all. That would be too much. We’ll leave it there because he tells a story or a song, and that is about a young woman stricken by a suspicious growth on her wireless internet box. Her service provider tells her that it is nothing to worry about. It is fine madam, nothing to worry about. I know, I know it doesn’t seem like anything to worry about but there’s one on the back of the screen now. Is it a flat screen? Yes. Well there you go, that’s normal madam. But no, you don’t know, there’s one on the return key, and I think some of the other keys are springing up. Okay madam, just relax, we’ll send somebody out within three to five days, and they’ll have a look at it all. And a man arrived the next week and he found dark little lumps all over her body and her fingers stuck in her ears and her curled into a ball and she was dead but the internet connection was still functional.
Train Story
Train Story
“Yellow.” After much deliberation, she decides upon her favourite colour. Blue falls short, losing by a half a length. Yellow is a happy colour, perhaps the happiest, according to her. My thoughts quickly turn towards poisonous yellow. The image of a yellow tree frog flashes behind my vision, staring at me with black eyes full of passive aggressive potential. The hazard signs that draw attention to the lethal threats of radiation, high voltage, biohazards, all black on yellow.
“Trefoil.” It comes out as I awaken from my yellow reverie. Thought doesn’t exist, but here it penetrates reality. But a word does not exist either, does it, insofar as it leaves no mark? I could look her in the eye and deny having said anything at all. A semantic investigation into words like ‘exist,’ or ‘reality,’ she might enjoy that.
“What?” She leans towards me very slightly, clearly thinking that I had said something. Her eyes are very blue.
“Nothing.” And I never said it. She looks out the window. I stare at her. She’s a dainty thing. The train trundles north at a steady speed. She absently surveys the landscapes as they pass.
“I think you’re having an emotional affair with me.” The train moves through the land. The next stop is hers.
An hour earlier she watched me drink a coffee. We talked about films, music and food. There was a moment where her face was about twelve inches from my face. We walked to the station together as we both were going towards the city. When I tried to buy my ticket at the machine, she kept pressing the wrong buttons on the screen. She laughed at her exploits. I told her to stop being so annoying but I didn’t mean it.
“I have to be there at nine.” You’ll be late, I think.
“What are you doing there, something fun?”
“Going for another walk.” No more questions from me.
The train moves through the land. The next stop is hers.
“What?” She leans towards me very slightly, clearly thinking I had said something. Her eyes are very blue.
“Nothing.” And I never said it.
Rob and Neil
“What about Rob?”
“Rob who?”
“Rob! Neil’s friend, Rob?”
“What about him?”
“Don’t give me that! You and Rob?”
“Nothing happened like, nothing!”
“No way.”
“No, seriously like, nothing happened.”
“Ah, I heard you scored Rob.”
“No! Who told you that?”
“Everyone was saying it like.”
“What do you mean, ‘everyone was saying it?’”
“Like, everyone there.”
“I pure wasn’t though.”
“Do you like him?”
“He’s nice like, he’s alright.”
“Would you score him?”
“If I haven’t already.”
“Have you?”
“No!”
“What?”
“I was just messing!”
“So would you?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Neil?”
“You like Neil?”
“What?”
“Ciara told me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, she said you were talking about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, I don’t know like, she just said.”
“Where did she get that from?”
“She just said.”
“He’s grand like.”
“Do you like him? Imagine if you were with Neil and I was with Rob?”
“So did you get with Rob? Do you like him?”
“I don’t know. We scored for a second but it was weird.”
“So you scored Rob.”
“Yeah. But, like, you were with Neil.”
“But don’t tell Ciara.”
“What, so you were with Neil?”
“Yeah, but he said there is some thing with Ciara.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t sure, he was all like, ‘uh, there’s this thing with Ciara and I don’t know what’s happening there.”
“Was he with Ciara?”
“He was before, like ages ago.”
“And does he like her?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s just real weird about it like.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s just kind of real off with him.”
“Yeah, she was real weird the other day.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was all like quiet when we were with Neil and the lads.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No.”
“Does Neil know about Rob?”
“I don’t know. They’re mates like, so probably.”
“Yeah.”
“He texted me after the other night, all like ‘hope you got home alright’ and stuff.”
“Rob?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you text him back?”
“Yeah, but I fell asleep and only did the next day.”
“I’d say you waited until the next day just so you could text all day.”
“No, I really fell asleep!”
“I’d say you did.”
“He didn’t say anything anyway. He asked if we’re going to Shauna’s at the weekend.”
“Oh yeah, her birthday.”
“Is that in her house?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going?”
“Are the lads going?”
“Neil and Rob and them?
“Yeah. Well they said they’d do what the lads were doing.”
“Oh right. They’ll probably go. Jake is scoring Shauna so…”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you getting off?”
“Just at the station. Pretty much the same.”
“Yeah, cool.”
“Do you want a lift up? Rich is collecting me.”
“Is that your brother?”
“Yeah.”
“That would be so deadly actually, I’m knackered.”
“Ah, no worries.”
Mourning Breath
- This is a poem that was published in the most recent issue of Icarus, a literary publication from Trinity College Dublin. I don’t enjoy writing poems, I find it really intrusive.
Mourning Breath
After dinner tobacco,
stale on the lower lip,
bitten and bitter,
soft taste of such
could still more progress,
angled now upon feathers
beneath the mercury stirred
by the after dinner deed.
‘You’ and ‘I’ are inadequate terms
for any parties,
present or not,
but we pretend because
that is what people do when they lie
here, ferment here, thoughts opaque,
whether empty bottles and cold butts
had anything to do with it.
Come back when you are ‘I,’
or is the visit the line of pronoun designation?
If I were ‘You,’ then the quilted gallows
might not sigh so heavily.
Snow
If anybody is still waiting for the final part of the Green Forest Blues series (Part 1 and Part 2 are already up), it’s on a break due to economic developments in Ireland. This is a story called Snow.
Snow
Paul was sick of chasing her. Had the pursuit been a literal endeavour, on a round track, his feet would be raw and the blood of his toils would be marked upon the ground, running continuously. As it were, there were no physical marks upon his body. Instead he felt heavy and as if he were slowly melting.
Of course, he was still dancing. He stared across the haze of the room, making sure to move his arms and legs in time with the pulse of everybody else, a pulse that he resented as it battered his chest. She was dancing with somebody else, or everybody else, and the pit of his stomach kept leaping up and trying to escape through his mouth. However, stoic as always, Paul maintained a sickening decorum. Halting the painful movement of his appendages to a beat that he could not engage with, his breathing became difficult. The beat was crushing his chest now and the door looked like a safe option.
The hallway was littered with snakes. Young ladies and gents flirted and laughed, standing and slouching against the walls. Negotiating the serpent pit was daunting but suddenly made easier as the front door swung open. All of the movement stopped around him. Outside the house there was a velvet blanket of white. Snowflakes drifted down from the night sky.
Paul drifted through the seemingly frozen crowd, buoyed by the pure white on black beauty of the snow against the night. As he came closer he saw a female figure in the blackness, standing upon the whiteness. There was not a single footprint around her. There she was, wearing her white dress and black tights, atop black heels. Snow gave way underfoot as Paul traversed the threshold, his first step sinking deep. He continued to move out to her. Her eyes were alight and she smiled.
Touching her hands, lifting them from her side. Paul held on so tightly. His arms now around her waist; he clutched her. He did not let go. They waltzed over the snow. There was no music but the sound of their breathing. Her breath was soft. Snow kept falling. Beneath their feet, everything was undisturbed. He pressed his lips against hers. She pressed her lips against his. They halted their dance. She clung to him as they kissed. She pulled herself more tightly to him. She rested her face on his chest. The snow stopped falling. Flakes held in mid-air, and everything stood still. A cat watched from a window.
The snow began to fall once again. She moved away. Now Paul was fixed on the spot. She took a step backwards. The snow crunched beneath her heel. She engaged Paul’s eyes. The look told him something that he did not understand. Her eyelids fell shut and her head bowed. She turned on her heel like a dainty carousel. Paul did not move as she walked away, leaving heavy red heel-toe prints in the whiteness. He followed the red drops as she disappeared into the blackness.
He was heavier than before. He raised his right hand adagio. The cold of his fingertips seared at the open flesh of the hole in his chest. He closed his eyes. The blood dripped down his body, saturating him. His black clothing fell towards an increasingly intense shade in the meager luminescence offered by the streetlights. Feelings began to fade until all that remained was the cold and a resigned helplessness. Paul melted.
The cat watched. Paul’s knees gave way and his body crumpled to the ground.
Poem: Street
- While I always maintain that poetry is dead when faced with people who genuinely love poetry, I don’t really think it is true. I don’t know how regularly I’ll publish this kind of stuff, if ever, but here’s a poem. I’ve been too busy to form an opinion and bitch on about it this week.
Figure 7.1: Troy McClure, unrelated.
Street
You look so dainty
crossing the road,
barefoot,
over puddles,
shoes in one hand,
with my jacket
over your head,
over your shoulders.
You smile
even though your dress is wet,
just a little,
just at the end.
You say something
and I nod,
water falling from my hair
towards the ground.
It is quite useless
to keep stars
in darkness
when light
smothers
the sight
of those who
need it.
Everything is deaf.
A street light struggles,
disregarding cliché,
desperately straining
to give us a spotlight.
It is too late.
The street sleeps
somewhere over there.
