The Shall and the Should of Death This way, then, you retained many insignificant images in your eyes. Who will have time to get baptized in the Lake of memory? Eternity lasts so little yet, it’s possible that certain justice must exist somewhere that explains under which pretensions a man dies with so many shall and should which death whispers his whole life vanishes since, you know, only one second is enough for the change of course his wings can take and don’t listen to them, seconds are precious since the man who dies is penniless with the choked death rattle of a haunted man he needed minutes, thousands of seconds to buy what? Insignificant images, yet, how can he repay? What can he borrow now? How many images of his memory can he sell? Minutes give birth to a dynasty of aged images and the interest seems to be unbearable. Is there anyone, then, who can pay for it?
the shop poor Willy had replaced the pagan turmoil of Hrothgar’s Feast with the blissed-out cooing of George Harrison. Larry grimaced at the music, took a hit off the joint. As minutes passed he grew into an Easter Island statue, a pitted mask smitten with sinister benevolence, relishing cosmic absurdities . . . I wasn’t interested in more drugs. I was cultivating a new yearning—for comforting fetishes like Turkish rugs or French etchings, or at least quality post-war British stuff, the old Pye Black Box gramophones, Hornby Trains in the original blue boxes, I was fed up with bankrupt stock and garage-sale rejects. And I wanted something with class. Something safe, please. Nothing too radical. “It’s not weapons, is it, Larry?” He passed the joint and began prising open the tea chest with a bent fork. “Just weird shit. Specially for you.” The chest contained thick folio-sized notebooks, bulging box files, a crumpled set of plans or blueprints, and half a dozen books in uniform bindings, ex-lib, half-calf and purple clo, gilt lttr, top edge gilt, gilt device on sp, approx 200 pp, frnt brds sl warped and stained, torn frontis in Vol I, some neat inscr, otherwise v good, ideal for a proper bookseller with a catalogue, not my Surprise Book Bins. “They’ve been in storage for years . . .” Larry sniffed defensively. A yellowed newspaper cutting fell out. ‘Fears of Red Atom Bombs’. He told me he’d acquired this heap of forties memorabilia as payment for some dope. I asked him which clients usually paid in waste paper. Larry looked uneasy. He liked to keep the different strata of his life separate. “A photographer that my gorgeous creature did some work for. A young guy. But ugly, thank God. She says he snuffles while he’s setting up the poses. Like a great rat . . .” He sucked the joint and giggled. “He’s heavily into cuisine and wine. I guess he can’t perform vintage sex.” Despite the dope I was getting impatient. I might raise something on tomes with fancy bindings, but as for wartime diaries, old blueprints—I inquired as to where the stuff originated. “Some old attic, south of the river. Like Norwood, or Streatham Common. ForGod’s sake, Nick, I only went there once. One of those high old houses with stained glass in the porch window. A Victorian rose-window with cruciform panels . . .” He exhaled slowly,seemingly bemused by the sudden emergence of this elegant adjective. “I suppose there aren’t any pieces from the windows in that trunk?” I was seized with entrepreneurial glee at discovering yet another way of repackaging splinters of the past, little sunset glints of nostalgia for an already uneasy seventies. “Too late. His gaffer was tearing the place apart, converting it into a shop
Troubadour Troubadour tunes chords chime on the listening wall of loneliness clouds attend flimsily just enough to grasp a few notes the red ‘do’ or the shrouded ‘mi’ when the blue eyes of her highness shed brackish tears dubious fidelity as the amorphous grasps a shape a headless idol while crusader sharpens his command and sword another head served on a blasphemous altar son of man exiled leaves ravenous void
I Want You ‘Now’ Now, here, next to me! I don’t want you to come tomorrow. I don’t want you to tell me what time you’ll come. I want you to come in the night and ring the doorbell, suddenly, when I’m asleep. Without me knowing it! Unexpectedly! To come and ring the bell and as I would open the door half asleep and startled you’ll slip under my blankets and I would never wake up until morning and in your arms. I want to wake up and smell the fragrance of your cologne when you shave in the bathroom. You’ll kiss me as you leave and I shall go back to the unravelled bed sheets. I’ll hear the door close behind you I’ll smile as if I’m in a dream, while I would still be asleep. And when I get up hours later not to know whether it was a dream or reality that I dreamed or I truly experienced all this.
Manolis Aligizakis 