Sit with me a little

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

We can hear the screaming.

Can you hear the screaming?

How does it sound to you?

Is it loud or is it drowned out?

There is a little clump of dandelions out there

in my garden.  Their flowers are yellow.

The cherry tree has a blight of blossom

on some of its branches.  They wave in the wind.

I want to get closer to the dandelions but

there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un spoken.

I can hear the gulls now.

They were here before

And they will be here after.

A striped towel is flapping on the washing line

and the bucket of pegs is full of water.

I want to count the dandelions,

I want to wait and tell the time with their clocks.

But there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un speakable.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me,

this April afternoon.

That Tearing

By Bernise Marie D. Carolino

Let’s read a story you say with the book open on your lap as you sit me down next to you and we turn the pages and as we are reading we are also writing the story as we go along and as the papers rustle they echo strangely in this empty room and it is all a lie because the book is on the table and my hands are on the pages and they are all mixed up because at some point the book got so worn it lost its spine and its order and you say let’s read a story but you were lying and I am lying to myself and you aren’t here anymore and I crumple the pages and I fold what I can’t bear to discard and I know I will hide them all over the house so that I can forget them and keep finding them for years to come and so maybe I still can’t forget you completely but the point is a paper that’s open and unfolded is so much more easily torn.

Him & Her.

‘I’m falling apart’, he joked, rubbing his throbbing left wrist.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look up from the television that blared out like a wall between them.

He sloped off to bed and slept, despite the noise from the room below and the jolts of pain shooting down his left arm.

She went to the pantry and returned with the gingerbread man and bit down.

He awoke screaming. His left hand was missing, like it had never existed in the first place. The skin had perfectly sealed the stub of his arm.

Her tongue licked at the gingerbread crotch.

He produced an exuberant erection.

She continued.

He cried for his missing left hand, but couldn’t resist reaching down to touch himself with his right.

She bit the gingerbread man’s right hand clean off.

He thrashed and shrieked and shouted as his right hand disappeared before his very eyes.

She yanked up the volume on the television.

He wept like a deserted baby.

Her teeth chipped off the icing mouth.

He couldn’t scream or shout any more.

She ate it all up until it was just a head with confectionary eyes.

He took up significantly less space in the bed.

She picked the eyes off, one by one.

He was left in the dark.

She finished him off with a crunch.

Silence.

She walked upstairs.

He wasn’t there.

She brushed the gingerbread crumbs off the sheets.

He had fallen apart.

She finally laughed.

How the Frynch Stole Twitmas
(with deep gratitude and sincere apologies to dear Dr. Seuss)

Every Twit down in Twitville
Liked Twitter a lot,
But the Frynch,
Who lived just North of London,
Did NOT!

The Frynch hated Twitter!
The whole Twitmas season.
Now please don’t ask why,
No-one quite knows the reason.

It could be his laptop
Wasn’t plugged in quite right,
It could be perhaps
That his pants were too tight.

But I think the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his dongle was two sizes too small.

Whatever the reason,
His dongle or pants,
He stared at the screen,
Having one of his rants.

‘They’re tweeting their greetings!’
He started to shake.
‘Tomorrow is Twitmas,
This is too much to take!’

Then he growled, with his Frynch fingers nervously drumming,
‘I MUST find a way to keep Twitmas from coming!’

For tomorrow he knew all those twittering nerds,
Would wake bright and early, like little blue birds
And the words! The words! Oh, the words, words, words, words!
That’s the thing that he hated! The WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, WORDS!

For the Twits young and old would sit down on their seats,
And they’d tweet. And they’d tweet. And they’d TWEET, TWEET, TWEET, TWEET!

And the more the Frynch thought of this whole Twitmas row,
The more the Frynch thought, ‘I must stop Twitter now!
Why for more than three years, I’ve put up with this crap.
I must stop Twitter from working - Asap!’

Then he got an idea!
A devilish idea!
More devilish than anything got in Ikea!

And he grabbed some bin bags
And some old empty cases,
(He just couldn’t wait
To see all their Twit faces!)

And off, with a smirk, that naughty Frynch crept,
To the place where he knew all those silly Twits slept.

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile like a snadget,
Around the whole town, and he took every gadget!

He took all the mobiles, he took the PCs,
He took all the internet-ready TVs.
He took the computers, he took the laptops,
He took the iPhones, the iPads and iPlops.

And when he had grabbed all the items above,
He started to take other things the Twits love,
He took all their LOLs and their LMAOs,
He stole their hash tags from their little hash toes.

He snatched their Retweets and their mentions and then
He snaffled the Trending Topics Top Ten.
He kidnapped their followers, erased their Dms.
All went in his sack, which he threw in the Thames.

Then he sat on the bank and he nervously waited,
With his lip fully bit and his breath fully bated
Until the sun rose. But then the Frynch frowned,
‘They’re just waking up … but what is that strange sound?’

All the Twits down in Twitville, the princes and bums
Were talking - without a device near their thumbs!
They chatted, they laughed, they guffawed and they chortled,
They sang and they shouted, they sniffed and snortled.

The butchers, the bakers, the students and tourists,
The housewives, the bankers, the fish pedicurists,
The teachers, the stalkers, the geeks and the druids,
They actually met and swapped bodily fluids!

And the Frynch heard this sound, this unheard-of kerfuffle,
And he frowned and he blinked and he started to snuffle.

He HADN’T stopped Twitmas from coming!
It CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

The Frynch groped for hours, ‘till his dongle was sore.
Then the Frynch thought of something he hadn’t before!
‘Maybe Twitter,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a phone.
‘Maybe Twitter … perhaps … has a life of its own?’

And what happened then … ?
Well, in court they did say
That the Frynch’s small dongle
Grew three sizes that day!

And the minute his dongle had started to swell,
He looked at the gadgets and cried ‘Bloody Hell,
What a silly old git!’ and he fell to the floor,
‘What a nitwit-tit-git I have been, that’s for sure!’

And ashamed and aroused, he went back to the town,
Dongle proudly erect but his head hanging down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘But could you, at a pinch,
Bear to forgive me, this silly old Frynch?’

And the Twits took one look at this figure forlorn,
With his chin on his chest and his confidence torn,
‘Well, it’s true’ they replied, ‘that we do need some closure.‘
So they jailed him for theft and indecent exposure.

Mrs Stephen Fry’s book, How to Have an Almost Perfect Marriage, is now available for pre-order here.