Jab jab. Skewed for years, bodies damp and mildew. Two men crumple under a bridge. Corps filth. I am one of those men. Age and physique unimportant. Above, vaulted concrete a collected cloud nudging downpour. Real sky we haven’t seen for time, time, maybe, I think, months, no, wait, he’s telling me, what you say? What you say, Hen? Speak up. Enunciate man. No, longer, reckons years. Jab jab. Now I don’t remember. Jab jab keeps things unclear, digging into knowing isn’t useful for boys like us. Different appetites, see. Can’t offer sustenance the way you expect. Doesn’t coalesce. You like my make-up? That’s kind. I try. Hen doesn’t care too much about his visage, but it’s important to keep something up. I do his face for him. You see the white paint around his eyes, you see the black eyebrows drawn high along the edge of the circle? Two thick sad-mouth brows. Flick at the corners of the eyes, just for prettiness. Blackberry juice lips. What a shocker! Fur toque. And, I, selflessly, skinhead. But I get the brogues today!
You’ll be able to recognise the tragedy as it stretches through your town hoarsely, in your own heart, even. All is true. Gazing, pointing, semen, piss, strangers, sweat, buildings. A spectacle of disintegration. An atmosphere of hysterical festivity underwritten by potential violence. You can see them swing their tails and clack their hooves. Around the table. Preening over their starters, their soup. A nibble of bread, and then looking over urgently, whinnying to some force outside of the room, outside the doorway. Lips are tight, yellow, yet somehow the noises emerge.
Oi! Waste, clown, tramp. Prole. They call us. Canned response. Civil servants. Sodomised by presumption. Over-bathed. Sacks of fur. Charmed to meet yer! We wait. Rrrrolling our rrr’s, rrrrrrrrr brrrrrrrrrrrr llrrrllrrrrr. Here it is, the moment! Left alone, finally, scant interruptions, here — here, we come into our garden. So NICEaah! It can shift, the time, give it a good poke, it can stop. Another one, go on, in the ribs this time, there you go, one more and it’ll manipulate for yer. Sometimes it’s 3:36am. The light comes inside-to-out, that’s when. Up-up-up! See, in the mirror shard? Take it, Hen, see yerself? Feel the up-up, the radiate? 3:36 we move unencumbered by dank concrete, no ties, no use for surreptitious looks. Send me forward. Don’t hear the civil calls. Exit the shell, limbs dislocate from so long stuffed joints. Things rattle all other minutes, but for now they run smooth. I could chew on a motorbike. But you lot wake, you disturb us, invent a new type of spectre. Peel them eyes. A pox on you. And then already the sinking. And, still, wanting bread for your brat. Surrounded by hail. Smiles!
Mumbling something, are you? Apologies I presume.
The hands?
How are they?
Crippled.
Only when he clenches.
— 'Chew on a Motorbike', Ethan Price
