Untimely #14 - Beneath The Paving Slabs - The Beach!

Ben brushed sand off his flank and propped himself up on his elbows to watch Erica dance in the waves.

Erica whirled naked in the froth.

Nico thumbed through a thick book, flicking his gaze from the pages to Erica’s great breasts.

“Every word a new world.” He said.

“After the spectacle we all became dancers.” Said Ben.

The men stood up to join Erica in the spume.

“How we laugh!”

The Man was drawing an alphabet frieze in the sand with a stick.

He re-used an old joke from the old world.

“E is for ‘Existence is futile’”

Pirates!

Arrant

Vikings!

Indignant!

“No

Gold!”

Sand cities rose on the rippling strand.

Lovers loll, stroll hand in hand,

And swap lips and tongues in swinging bands,

Bronzed and buff and taut and tanned.

So life goes in the cities of sand.

The Man has finished drawing his alphabet frieze in the sand with a stick.

He plants the stick in the sand.

Evening sun strikes a long shadow across his old face.

Ben towels down.

Erica smokes.

After the dance they all made love.

Caressing Erica’s great breasts Nico cracks a joke about the old world.

How they laugh.

Untimely #14 - the defeatist

I simply can’t remember it the way everyone else seems to. Other accounts I have heard talk of the violence, the presence, our “desperation”. Many words from mouths of participants – struggle, attaque, triomphe, – make me think I must have been elsewhere. I see myself more as at a party, a rock concert, you know? It is loud, people pushing about. I see a woman at intervals; I make eyes of the revolution at her. I convince myself at lust in her glance, but really I doubt that I can be made visible from the fifty, sixty, three hundred other women and men at the roadside.

People now say, ‘Oh to have been there’, but I do not say anything. I know that I was there, my feet were on the ground non? But the nature of “l’experience”? I know nothing more about that than my feet were tired and the ground covered with rocks. ‘Those guys really showed them’ is what some people, looking backward, say. But I always ask ‘Yes? What did we show, and to who?’ You know? That gets me the bad look, sometimes the curled lip. Sometimes even the punch.

I don’t mind, it all feels the same to me. You get angry, you get loud, you hit or be hit, you calm down and it goes away. Of course, you are back where you started.

It is all the same trial. Napoléon in Russia 1812; the Sex Pistols in Club De Chalet Du Lac in September ’76; our battles. Where is the difference? Boom or bust: revolution as economy, non?

Forget it, I sound like a fifteen year old. I am too tired to try anymore. I dream  to remain static, you know? Ah, screw you, screw me; is all the same.

UNTIMELY #14 – A Sunday Walk

We awoke an hour before dawn and left the house when even Mother was still asleep. Our bodies ached and we stank of the nightsweat, could feel it in our shirts damp against our skin, but we didn’t dare wash for the noise. And so we left in silence, taking the parcels we’d hidden under our pillows, the dry bread and cheese, the fruit and nuts, and half an onion I’d managed to smuggle into my pocket during supper. We had a litre of father’s wine between us and I felt very grown up.

The moon was gone and the sky lightening as we walked in the misty gray along the edges of the fields. There was a low fog and our clothes wet now with condensation. The cold got inside our coats and our gloves and our scarves and we walked rigid and tense to ward it off.

At first light we came to an inn on the outskirts of the city. There was a fire and men talking and the sounds of dishes being washed. We stood close up against the long wooden bar and were grateful for the warmth. Slowly we drank the coffee, lapping the bitter water and feeling our spirits rise.


And so we stormed the barricade
And threw our rocks over the flaming sawhorses
Bureaus ancient and smoking
Lacquered wood peeling and cracking and hissing in the flames
Popping and creaking and collapsing with a sudden rush of air
Whoosh down and bang and the smoke billowing forth in acrid clouds
And we ran back for more
Tearing up the streets
And we took the pickaxes
And clattered the cobbles
And ran back to the flames, hurling our missiles onto their shelters


In the night the fires burned and the streetlights didn’t come on and we’d never seen the city so dark. Smoke and clouds blocked out the stars and we ran from blaze to blaze and felt along the walls with one hand when we couldn’t see, when it was pitch, but always we moved forwards. When we heard voices we ducked into doorways, hid under cars, and waited for the boots to pass, our faces close against the stones, the tyres, the rainbow puddles of oil that filled our noses with the scent of battle.

UNTIMELY stimulus #14