This is from an abandoned project my friend set me on, sending me scans of black and white photos they'd found as prompts for writing. I wrote a short story and poem, see below for the photograph followed by the writing.
Unwillingly and Impossibly Received
Occasionally one of us will
snicker or sigh to ourselves. Me and Bheki have long since abandoned vocal
conversation as we wander along the river, without a map, with few supplies and
little clean water. We have drifted away from the real, instead reeling through
the inventive passages of our minds, imagining conversations with those who
live, those who died, and those who never existed.
…Can’t feel
from the ankle down anymore. There was a point when we enjoyed a strengthening
as we walked, our bodies whipped lean and sharp, cleaving miles and miles of
earth; but with dwindling supplies came the soreness, then the numbness.
I can see
particles constantly dance in the air. Rain? Spores? I know its ash, but can’t
help imagine otherwise. For a moment my minds blurry eye conjures a huge
luminous sun, sinking into the river, forcing away the clouds, turning the
river a deep and pleasant green; the fluid imagining dissipates, and I can see
the ash settle on the waters surace as we walk along the misshapen craggy bank
of the river… Then it shatters me.
Brighter,
more painful, more vivid than anything in human experience, comes the
overwhelming visage of the photograph. There on the shore of the river, just as
misshapen and craggy, the water clear of ash and swarming with natural shades,
just as I remember the rivers and lakes of my youth, stands a man, with a misshapen
and craggy face, combed head of hair, white shirt tucked in, cast in black and
white film, relenting into posing for a holiday picture, decades ago, before
the sky-fires, long before that; I had been inescapably visited by a singular
moment of a time before.
I am sure I
had been screaming, but when I look at Bheki, he has the same simple flashes of
emotion as before. So I conjure my Bheki,
who still has energy and health, the twin who lives in my mind, and spin out
this feeling, never before felt in human memory, but he simply smiles, showing
his bright teeth, before he is lost, smiling, filling the sky and settling down
gently into the river, just like the sun might if it weren’t eternally obscured
with cloud. I am left gaping with this singular moment, the photograph,
offering no guidance as to where we should go or if mankind will survive,
merely suggesting that at some point in a forgotten string of history, a man
was forced to stand in front of the river for a picture, a souvenir, that I
have unwillingly and impossibly received.
A Moment Seen by Kodak Plus X Film
That first foray of exploration… What do people hold in
their unsure grip?
Clumps of dirt? Swathes of hair and fur?
But there is my daughter, feeling the canyons and tidal
waves
Of her father’s scars, slithered across his face,
A not-abnormal face,
But close to that child’s eyes it was a plank split from an
ancient tree…
Brick-brown face, skin rashed working under the sun and wind,
Before the evenings spent
Dancing on canvas, an aggressor, a defender, a winner, a
loser, a loser…
Two primed grown men splot out each other’s blood for an
audience of tuxedos
Snarling; his brain is ingrained with the ballet of the
game,
But all fights need hate to happen. Love finds no fists with
which to fight with.
Ding Ding!
Hair uncombed stained vest hand holding cracked ribs other
squeezing beer bottle neck constantly growling at me gazelles and hyenas
yelling squeezing that bottle squeezing and squeezing and finally it shatters
across my forehead
None of the gazelles
make it across the lake
Apparently the blood ballet is not enough to release tension.
Pack a bag and go! Pack a bag and go!
Stood on the street corner, a rush, a gusting wind of
addictive new paths
Alas, my hand produces only a grimy penny from my pocket, a stubbed
path.
Taxi driver with no time no time miss sorry miss in or out
in or out.
Not long after, the morning sickness came.
Shirt and tie, furnishings in shot- all suddenly appear with
each fight won, violence paying for ‘proper’ domesticity. While the dulled
history of this moment cloaks me the camera bites three times eating the
moments
As she feels the burred jaw, the undefended face mashed by a
child’s stubby hands
As he gazes at that face. Does it eat at that necessary
hatred within him? She enjoys playing with the lips, the nose- does she enjoy
him, or the mish-mash of features found on a boxers head?
As she looks beyond Daddy, the man with the shield, with the
cudgel, at the indistinct Mummy, dazed behind a lens, watching those sprouting
fingers touch those cracked lips. She asks why why why why with her gaze how
how how how
Why/how do we fight why/how do we hate why/how do we love
Whilst dancing in the dark ballet
Screaming with love with hate
Loving to fight and fighting to love
Descending unto the child
Terrified of her gaze
That knows absolutely nothing and yet consumes all.
