Part 2

anti-vert leaves.. through the window i hear the queue.. a line of impatient men bark.. i spy through the only open orifice of the cell the wrinkled hags amongst them.. worn brown under encompassing black garb. some visited me or others like me. all day all night.
i came to recognise the old ladies hired help to either watch, berate or participate. at certain times each day it would be hoisted and hosed, hoist and hose. left alone for a while to feed from a bowl. sometimes there’d be some description of meat in the stew.
sometimes screams would come through the walls sometimes from within me. on these occasions i’d open eyes as wide as possible to pass through the walls to see creatures roam and clouds escape in whatever order or shape i chose. some times..

when the waist belt was returned to a locked position i re-entered the room to its hard walls dirt floor and stench. not all the jellyfish would swim down to the hole at the incline.. at the corner.. where my bowl would sit after the hoist and hose. marooned globules would attract ants who would heave away what they could. the left would attract dirt and straw to cover themselves to patiently await vanishing time.

moonlight would voyage the cells darkness. through the curtainless window opening with its corroding rail.
a searchlight through the filth. bringing to attention bounties of strangeness. once it found a special. a disc with two sockets.. too small to be a skull. a brightness of mother of pearl with a lip running its circumference. too far to touch it would disappear during the day but would return at night. what was visible was small but who knows how deep it went into the dirt. an alien that came up for air during the quite times.. a staff that pierced the entire earth.. a lost lightening bolt frozen in sympathy for me?
one day it vanished too.. absorbed into the mess like the jellyfish.. it never came back.

it was my turn.

if i was quiet if making myself small and silent if i could swing the weight of this chain that links my necklace if i could just create a pulley system if i did it when returning from the bowl it could..
it did.. now connected to a pin on the wall above the window. pulling on the chain to hoist myself into a hanging position.. choke and crash. again pull and crash. stuffing straw into the gap between my throat and steel.. another attempt. i made the window just in time before blacking out. u’d over the lip of the window.
wake.
understanding the strain or collapse had broken my lazy arm but also the necklace. it twitched for security it fell rusted inside the cell as i headlong out.. landing on bales that occasioned as seats for the waiting.

cracked voice (was that mine?). the laughter the fights the moans (was that mine?). no clouds or creatures. moon gone, replaced with the fizz of a neon sign and multicoloured bulbs strung out into distance. i crawl. my limbs have ceased and wasted. reaching the cover of the ditch under the fruit bulbs of escape... to peer out at
elephants cowering from the firebreathers explosions.
contortionists describing strange letters on a plinth above sodden gamblers violently slapping down cards and glasses of whiskey.
a dark figure moving within the centre of the panoptic carousel. a hand grappling within his groin as people laugh and slide on their plastic animals.

must make out. get lost. just move. thirsty there are no fountains lakes or puddles. hungry there are slithers of flesh gripping to a small bone.
i see stars and all is spinning and symmetrical. how long here? outside ditch has gone quiet and i have entered the eye of a storm. dust swirls in a hum of muddle. epicentre i try to control the mess of flow and counter-flow. I get caught up. myself from above a emaciated skeleton thing scratching slowly through dust.. all is awhirl around it. I feel my way in the darkness. that’s not me.. that cadaver down there.. my puppet controlled with electric strings. and watch how the stupid thing stops and looks around at the tornado of bulbs roads and posts.

crawl.