Saturday 24 August 2013

Avoiding a Guilty Reflection

When you walk the back streets, expect to step into a roomful of backbiters.  No mirrors - all avoiding their guilty reflections - who snatched the lyrics?  Some hug the walls, faces like irregular patchwork, stitched together by apprentices; others browned with macaroon bar skin; some just pram-free but learning the trade as fast as hot laxative.  Such a relief to escape with my minor blemishes intact and a wallet full of memory sticks.  Without them, I'd be like a bride without a trousseau, a satanic figure perched on the Isle of May without a blue stane to chuck at Crail kirk.  The words aren't just a livelihood.  They're also an identity, a contact with the parallel country you call home.

Touchkeys, black cables and all ports are on call.  A graphic pad and a source of energy are essential tech.  I broke the tender chains so many years ago and stepped, rock by rock, into a waiting body double.  Luckily, he was exactly my size and had been hanging around for half a century on some hammocking porch waiting for me to swing by.

But punching out the nicknames, the word-topiary, the hound's-tooth paragraphs are fine until someone throws a contract across the table.  Merc-masters, overdogs and muscular stand-ins barricade the doors and apply the mind-screws and stubs of legal documents.  And all I want to do is write and live.

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