Accidental Fiction...'Accidental Death'...

One of my 'rarely-actually-written' pieces of fiction, born of an exercise for the Leeds Writers' Group. The exercise specified a piece entirely in dialogue. So, there's no description of anything outside speech, (between you and me, that's probably why my goldfish-like poet's attention span held long enough to write it!) and the characters have no names as their conversation never calls for them... You should feel free to name them though, if they remind you of someone!


Accidental Death


“Oh my GOD, OH MY GOD! What did you do?!”


“What?! Would you please just calm down?! I can’t change it now, can I? Just shut up! Shut up! I need to think…”


“But…oh my God! I think I’m going to be sick!…oh, yep, I’m definitely going to be sick. How could you? How could you just…keep going like that?! ”


“Would you get a grip, please?! It’s not like I set out to do this! It was him or us, alright? By the time I saw him, it was already too late to brake! You weren’t wearing your seat belt…if I’d tried to stop, I’d have thrown you straight through the windscreen! Would that have been a better outcome?!”


“No! God, no! But, oh Jesus…look at him! I don’t think he’s breathing! There’s…oh God, there’s blood…I think he’s dead.”


“Well of course he’s dead! His neck is broken. I’ve never seen a head at that angle on anything living! But I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it now! It’s happened, hasn’t it?! We just have to calm down and deal with it.”


“We?! You were driving! Don’t drag me into this. I’m not taking the blame for it!”


“You weren’t wearing a seatbelt! You’re the reason I hit him! I’m not dragging you into anything…you’re already in! You owe me for this! I put myself on the line for you here…in that moment, when I could’ve braked? It was him or you!”


“Oh God!”


“Will you stop saying that?!”


“I can’t help it. I think I’m in shock! What do we do now? What do you do when this happens?! Should we call an ambulance?”


“Are you crazy?! An ambulance?! What good is an ambulance? Look at him! What would they do for him? No. We’re not calling anyone.”


“What? Surely we should at least call the police? To report it? We need to explain what happened. Someone will have to move the body. We can’t just leave him here! You can’t just drive away! He might have a family…and they’ll miss him sooner or later. Come rush hour, someone will see him. I’m definitely calling the… Oi! Give me the phone!”


“You’re not calling anyone. We can’t report this. You know how my driving record looks! I’ve got points already!”


“Points?! Screw your points! This is a life we’re talking about!”


“Exactly. I don’t know what they charge you with or not when something like this happens! We can’t report it. What about my life? What about our lives? I need my license for work! No work means no house, no car, no more of those weekend mini-breaks you like so much, no more fancy shoes...!”


“My God, you think I care about that right now?! That I’d be shallow enough to consider how this affects me, how it affects us, above doing the right thing?! Anyway, they’re not going to take your license. This was an accident. A pure accident! It’s dark…there aren’t any street lamps, and he wasn’t wearing anything that showed up in the headlights. I didn’t see him either. Not until…well, you know…and it’s 1.30am…what was he even doing out here on his own? People will understand. The police will understand. Please, just give me the phone…we have to tell someone! What about his family? …There could be kids expecting him home!”


“Oh great! A ‘kid’ guilt trip! Nice one! Just what I needed…because I don’t feel bad enough already! You’re really helping, aren’t you?! If you can’t make yourself useful, just go and wait in the car!”


“Useful?! I was trying to… Stop it! What are you doing?”


“Well, one of us has to be rational about this.”


“No! Don’t touch him! You can’t move anything until the police have seen it!”


“I’ve told you. There aren’t going to be any police. I’ll deal with this myself. Now either get hold of his legs at your end and help me move him, or get out of the way so I can drag him off the road.”


“Drag him off the road? Do you hear yourself right now? You’re like some sort of amateur gangster! What do you think you’re going to do?”


“There’s still a spade in the boot from last weekend. I’m going to bury him in the woods back there.”


“Oh my God…you’re serious, aren’t you?! Who the hell are you? Because you’re certainly not the same man I got in the car with this morning! How can you be so cold about this? Give me the phone! I mean it. Give me that phone right now! He has a family somewhere who will look for him tomorrow, who will miss him! And it’s not a guilt trip…there really could be kids who’ll…”


“We don’t know that! You can’t know that! There could be no one who’ll ever miss him! You have no idea if he has…if he had…a family. What if he has no one to care? What if he just lives out here in these woods?”


“Don’t be stupid! Does he look like he lives in the woods?!”


“I don’t know…I didn’t see him before we hit him, and I sure as Hell can’t tell now! Just imagine it turns out that no one would ever have missed him? But you had to go and report it, so I ended up with no license, and no work, and we couldn’t pay the mortgage and…”


“And you think you’re the one being rational here?! Look at him! Just look. You killed him and you don’t even care who he is! He has a name, and people who’ll miss him, and you’re talking about dragging him off into the woods, burying him in a shallow grave, and driving away…for the sake of your license?! It was an accident! A pure accident! Everything will be okay. You’re being ridiculous!”


“Me? I’m being ridiculous? I’m not the one getting hysterical about his home life! You don’t even know if he has a family…I keep telling you, it’s impossible to know that! And if I lose my license, all those things I said before…the house, the car, the money…all that is a reality…”


“Oh, for God’s sake, would you just wake up?! Of course he has a family! Can’t you see he has an ID tag on his collar? And seriously, when was the last time someone got charged with an offence after hitting a dog? Put the shovel down, Jason Statham, and give me the damn phone!”

New Commission...

I have a new commission to read at my friends' wedding in December...and they're giving me free rein to compose! (The trust is staggering!) So I'll be posting lots of ideas between now and then, and I could really use your help deciding which ones to show to the happy couple as potential choices. Below are four ready-composed efforts that I might consider. More will appear on the blog as I have time to add them. Please feel free to comment. Or if you like something I post elsewhere as an option, let me know...just remember, choose appropriately...it's a church wedding... ;-)


Talking

Hush.
Fall silently now
among our clear depths of endless time.
We have forever
to do more than this.

Lean your forehead on mine
and hold my eyes,
for this moment
this
instant
just let me look at you
and let us
touch.

If I did only this
for a thousand nights more;
became breathless with it;
I could not tire.
For each time my soul lays
eyes on you
I am astounded
anew.
And I need no food, no water,
only my soul's sight of you,
and to touch;
and I am sustained.

Hush.
Let our souls make endless exchanges,
far removed of courteousy,
and know this,
my love;
we will have forever
for talking.


Sand

In the end
it took only you to show me
that sand allowed to slip through your fingers
doesn't always blow away on the wind.
If there is no breeze
and no will to roam
it falls calmly in a pile at your feet
and is happy to be there.
It is happier still to be swept up, scooped up,
into a bottle or an hourglass-
To be confined inside a molten, cooled,
version of itself
only to be sure that its every grain
may be carried daily in your breast pocket
as close as possible...

And even though loose sand gets everywhere
inside the folds of clothes and sticks
to your skin and hair
It took only you to show me
how content I can be that it's there.

Even though it rubs now and then
gets in my eyes
and makes my skin sore
I couldn't stand
not to be covered in sand
or to leave the house without
An hourglass
In my pocket
Anymore.


While We Were Dancing

There was a time
I would not have thought our ship
could sail so long and smooth
A time, long ago, I dared hope
But didn't know...
And I would have thought, if it would come
Then it would come to me after you
In a dimly-lit piano bar over
midnight Sea-Breezes and Long Island Iced Tea
And the touch of a hand still cool
As the water-crystals
Beading
On my glass...

But it passed, that time,
and as I thought it, it was not to be.

It came though, just the same
as I had always hoped it would.
But love and the precious knowledge
of
its
Ever-presence
Came quietly to me.
No drinks, no lights, no music
Only you
And it came to me while we were dancing
In the silence, with the stars, in the garden,
Under a winter-iced moon.

Shrapnel

You come home with battle-scars
Wearing shrapnel in your skin
And it is only my
humble task
to take it out again.
To scratch my nails across your back
to ooze and fill
each crack in your heart and soul.

I am the one who moulds
against you
Guards the lonely voice of night,
Sinks my teeth into your flesh and
Bites
down hard in healing waves,
that crash across your steel-eyed gaze
and turn it bluer than a summer day
burn deeper than a heated ricochet
from the weapon across your back.

You plead with me to stop,
And I answer
that I love your perfect scars,
and a curse passes your lips as the stars
burst behind your eyes.
I trail my fingers through your day
And tear off your disguise
‘Til you are nothing anymore.
but flawless,
naked,
mine.

Rainbow

You fall on me And shatter, like shards of exploding light
And it is far, far, from the end of the coloured slide
We wondered on
as children hungry for the princely fairytale riches
of castle-lands on high.

It is summer
and through the sliver beyond you
I make out roof-tops
And chimney pots
Against an expanse of vivid blue sky,
And I tell myself, I do not care, one way or another,
if they have eyes.

Carefully covered for me
out of a dignity I did not possess for you, I chide,
“The rainbow was watching”, and I point and smile
as a storm cloud crosses your eyes,
a dawning moment, for I am not far yet that child,
and my frivolous joy
betrays me.

I push back the black bloom
West to go with softest fingers,
and I choose then not to know,
the truth,
as happy, golden sunlight warms us
through my white viscous curtain of hope.

And I roam and play
Restless youth not yet satisfied with enough.
“Another bruise?” I whisper, and you tell me it is time for lunch.
I watch the rainbow’s inverted smile,
Silently,
from a horizontal repose,
And despite myself, am struck with the honesty
Of its insistent stay -

It will rain again today
Only heavier, I suppose.

'The Letters of Abelard and Heloise'...the poetic influence of an 11th-century narcissist?

I've threatened before to start adding other things that interest me to this blog, aside from my resultant poetry, as I think it might start to explain some of my influences and inspirations (to myself as well as anyone else who decides this is worth a read!). I'm aware that a lot of what I write stems from things I've seen, done, studied or read; that a lot of it relates to experience. However, having said that, much of what I've read, studied, and continue to read on a poetic level, is late medieval or early modern, with the occassional dip into the 19th-century. I love Mallory, Chaucer and Donne, Shakespeare, Marlow and Rossetti, so it seems strange even to me, that I should begin an insight into my poetic psyche with a post about Peter Abelard and Heloise!

For those as yet unfamiliar with Abelard (you have no idea what gems of hilarity you've been missing in his autobiography!), he was born in 1079, in the village of Pallet, in Brittany. His father being a manorial lord and minor noble, Abelard, as eldest son, was intended for a career in knighthood. However, as a boy, he found book learning favourable to the lure of violent conflict, just killing, honour, and chivalry:

'I prefered the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosphy, and armed with these I chose the conflicts on disputation instead of the trophies of war...' 

(Thought a translation might be appreciated rather than the original medieval Latin! - The letters of Abelard and Heloise,  Peter Abelard, Héloïse, Betty Radice, M. T. Clanchy, 2003.)

When a little older, Abelard became a wandering scholar, which during this period, also made you a monk of sorts, as all scholarly persuits and teaching were theological in nature and under church control. Abelard spent some time at Locmenach before heading to the Cathedral School of Notre Dame, Paris, where he promptly decided (on somewhat shaky grounds!) that his intellect and powers of theological interpretation were far superior to that of his peers and teachers. As a result, he resolved to set up his own school in Melun, around 1101, where he royally irritated his contemporaries with a condescending attitude and a fondness for being right!.

Abelard returned to Paris in 1113, becoming a teacher there. Yet he was clearly not cut out for a life of piety! He began a torrid and forbidden affair with the niece of Canon Fulbert; the apparently beautiful and alluring young abbess, Heloise. The pair fell madly in love, and exchanged various amorous, pained and guilt-ridden letters describing their passions, admirations, separations and inability to resist their basest temptations. Various trysts ensued in the abbeys and convents of Europe, eventually resulting in a son and a secret marriage...all prior to the complications of vengeful castration and accusations of heresy!

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (as should by now be obvious to even the most previously ignorant reader!) are neither late medieval to early modern or, largely poetic. However, they do, in much the same manner as Shakespeare's sonnets and tragedies or Mallory's tales of knighthood in Morte d'Arthur, tell a vivid and engaging tale of gripping desire, an impassioned and destructive affair, and the conflict between duty and love, providing a peek at the results of unchecked human emotion and weakness that is as relevant today as ever. The letters are also soaked with that over-blown and fervent language of high medieval piety, devotion, love, sorrow and guilt that fires the artist in me!

'God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself. I wanted simply you, nothing of yours.'

'I desired to keep you whom I loved beyond measure for myself alone.'

So, after having more free time this week than usual to over-indulge in all things artistic, and finding myself once again retrieving The Letters of Abelard and Heloise from a dusty shelf in the spare bedroom to thumb its well-worn pages, I think I must face the truth. I frequently write in a style very similar to that of Abelard and Heloise, utilising themes of guilt, passion, love, pain, Heaven, Hell, damnation, and futility...and I'm fascinated by the ever-surprising strengths, weaknesses, and inexplicable, unavoidable agonies of people. Somewhere along the line, Abelard and Heloise have influenced my writing.

'How can it be called repentance for sins, however great the mortification of the flesh, if the mind still retains the will to sin and is on fire with its old desires?'

The man himself, I'm certain, would have rebuffed this 'mighty revealation' with a sniffy "but of course," ...and thus, I must also admit to myself, that my inspirer was a self-indulgent narcissist, who enjoyed pedalling his own intellect and creativity for gains of fame and admiration (who me?!). However, he, and his lover Heloise, were also passionate human beings, great forward thinkers not afraid to speak their minds, and above all else, engaging writers that keep me taking that book down from its dusty shelf over and over again...so in this context, Abelard (and Heloise), my self-appreciating friend(s), I'm more than grateful for your contribution to my muse!