When the next big cup game or away trip comes
and there's a bus
and there's beer
and it's
like it should be again
Then
I will try and sing
O BANGOR I
twice as loud as I ever have before
because then
I won't be able to hear
that you are
not belting it out
And maybe somewhere
in the universe
the soundwaves will land
where someone needs them.
My dad wrote once something about a newspaper headline that read something like:
Miracle Baby Saved From Earthquake.
The gist was that this infant had been thought lost in the rubble of a hospital, one amongst thousands of deaths due to this natural disaster. But then, three days later, a dog managed to get beneath the collapsed nursery ward and barked the bark that meant ‘a human is here’, and the rescuers dug and carefully balanced precarious bricks, and pulled out a dusty but otherwise unharmed child.
God be praised, said the baby's mother. This is truly a miracle.
My dad went on to proper interrogate this.
As for me, in my blunderbussing way, I have some questions.
Like:
Where was God when the earthquake was brewing?
Couldn’t He have diverted it toward an uninhabited desert or somewhere else where there were no people?
What was the benefit for anyone for this to happen?
And, quite frankly, why did He let this happen in a country where the poorest people lived, like it always seems to?
I mean, are you omnipotent or not, mate?
Or are you just fucking with us?
Or as I put it:
God can’t, won’t, or isn’t.
Which fits better on a T-shirt.
The longer life goes on, and the more people we lose along the way, and the more confused I am about how people vote the way they do and how they are racist and weird and all of that, then I think I understand religion a bit more.
Without certainties, there is a black hole. Doubt breeds faith, because the ineffable and the aleatory are one and the same. Faith in a higher purpose shifts the responsibility onto a supernatural power, and one which we are not expected to understand.
If everything is part of God’s plan, then we conclude that the plan must be Good. We just need to have faith.
Moreover – and I love this bit – if you question God then he’ll fuck you up, like he did to Job for a bet with the Devil. He’s a proper prick, God. Seriously. A huckster. A self-centered murdering bully-boy arsehole. And the miracle melts away into chance and physics again.
His lad was alright, for a hippy, mostly, except:
Bringing Lazarus back from the dead to make a point when you could have saved him all the hassle is not a miracle, it’s a cunt’s trick. No wonder Lazarus never smiled again til he died again a few decades later. I'd have loved to be there when he caught Jesus up in Heaven again. Imagine that conversation.
Miracle My Arse.
Lola Cat landed awkwardly.
Poor little Lola Cat.
The leg was broken, said the vet.
And that could have been that.
But people rallied round online
Their hearts and wallets open
They crowdfunded a thousand pounds
For her operation.
Little Lola lost her leg.
A tripod, limping cat
She’ll adjust to it, you know,
Assured the relaxed vet.
Nervously the little cat
Came back and slinked and hid
And ate some treats, and had some fuss,
Recovered bit by bit.
Now Lola jumps and bounces round
And explores this and that
And sleeps and purrs and plays
Like any other cat.
There’ll always be the missing leg.
Life throws these things at you.
But Lola’s learned to live again
And one day we can too.
The guitar was instantly familiar although it had two too many strings.
I picked it up and battled with it. It was as much of a piece of shit as the bass version was.
It was £160 and I laughed because back then if you got one for £20 they’d’ve seen you coming.
You had one.
Another neighbour had a Kay for a bit, which I bought.
Then I had one.
I used to use the wall cavity as a kind of amplifier, but only for certain notes.
Not all of them would resonate. I learned why, much later.
Nonchalantly (I thought) I threw it on the bed one day – quite gently really – and the neck hit the wall, and split in half.
So now I had half a Kay Bass.
The neighbour then swapped his microphone for an airgun,
so that was the end of that band.
I might buy a Kay if I see one for maybe £50 or something.
Playing – fighting - that six-stringed guitar really did feel like coming home.
Like if it was pissing it down all the way and there was no telly cos there’d been a power cut and all you could do was to – quite gently – rest the headstock against the cavity wall and inexpertly try and play Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys.
I have been
shouting at bluebottles
(I was going to try and write more, but this pretty much sums it all up)
Hapusrwydd ar goll
Hiraethu dros ben
Dwi'n gwbod y ffordd nol, ond hefyd methu weld hi
Does na dim hyffordiant am hyn
Ac y dyddiau dywyll yn barhau
Fydd na obaith
Dwi'n gwbod hyn
Ond ar hyn o bryd mae'n annodd i coelio hi
Does na dim unrhuwpeth alla i wneud
Ond edrych i fyny o waelod yr dwll
Rhywle, yn sicr, mae yna ganu morfil'n dwfn
Ag yn nofio drwy'r mor du a hen:
Yn y cyfamser, wna i trio beidio a thrio;
Ond nid mae na donnau o heddwch eto
I syrffio - nag i boddi.
O this game is rigged against itself and
everyone is always playing and
the rules change and
then everybody loses
and
this is a bad game.
I do not like this game.
I don't want to play this game anymore.
Can we agree to wipe the slate clean?
Come back and we can play a better game?
The game is up. The game has gone.
Are you game? Am I game?
game is squawking alive
life seeping away under squalls of rat laughter and gunshot
this game is a bad game
this game is a bad game
this game is a bad game
this game
Being the youngest - at the time, and at the time four years was centuries – I was always Fritz.
“You vill pay, Englischer pig dog!!!” I’d say, in my very best Commando Comics impression. Then dffdfdfdfddffff you and M would serve up a salvo of mouth-machine-gun fire and I’d clutch my chest dramatically with both hands and shout
AIEEEEEEE
Because it was the end of the war for me, Fritz Old Chum.
Then you and M would go around the corner into the car park, and when you came back you’d say, “Did you see Fritz? He was here just now but we bally well showed him a lesson.” And I would shake my head and say “No, I missed him,” and so the game continued until you or me or M got bored and went looking for conkers or just crawling through the trees trying to avoid dogshit, but inevitably one of us would – oh god, I can feel it still, and smell it, sticky, sweet, foul – put our hand straight into a fresh one and puke.
You didn’t remember any of this when I asked you about it last year, and I won’t be able to jog your memory now with the other thing I remembered, which was that – being the youngest, at the time – I could fit into the coal hole thing by the Big Red House where the Whispering Lady lived, and I could come up again with a few nuggets of smokeless posh fuel and bring them home to put on the fire.
“We found them near the coal hole,” I’d squeak uncertainly. “The coalman dropped a few.”
Of course, we all knew that was false, but we were quite skint and a couple of hours’ free heat was fine indeed. Mum and Dad didn’t approve really. We always got by without shonky fooling like that, and we always had warmth and always had food no matter what, and the roof above our heads was always – somehow, just about – paid for.
Funny isn’t it, how these little vignettes crop up when you’re not expecting it. There were holly trees and ivy crawling up old stone, and hundreds of skittish little squirrels, but most of all I remember three brothers – at the time – playing together and really, really believing in the tableau.
Fritz got the bad deal in all this. He was only there so we could win. Or, so you and M could win. I always seemed to be just a minute too late to fully appreciate the power of our unity.
And the future seemed endless.
I tried, really tried, to talk to Christ who had conquered death.
It was a bit selfish of Him not to share the trick. But He remained silent.
Consolation, comfort, all that craic.
I wanted to ask Him what the big deal was anyway. Why bother
saving us from our sins? Redeeming us? To what end? Heaven?
Crass cravings, at best, cock.
What’s the point, I wanted to know, of Earth and life? You know,
Heaven being the ultimate goal. Why not cut out the middleman?
Course, so far, no contact.
I know it’s a cliché but fair play to Him, crucifixion is a terrible way to go.
I mean, it’s a crowdpleaser and a pretty dramatic tactic, I confess.
Confess? I take my own fall.
I wanted Christ to tell me that the death of a good man must be celebrated,
because that man has taken his place in eternal bliss, for evermore, and all that...
...Christ alive it’s total bullcrap isn't it. An insult.
Never mind your so-called eternal bliss, mate, we’re fucking crying here and now.
…
…
Nope, still nowt.
Oh well.
Cheers now, mind how you go.
There is an alpha et of missing letters lurking in my head.
May e y the time I get to Z I will process that he’s.
ut I can’t make that rhyme,
Certainly not yet:
There is too much missing. And I know, and I’ve said
it myself: it’s OK and natural to e ereft -
ut I don’t think I elieve my
Unrelia le reath.
And the guilt of that is poison uilt on longing left to rot.
A centre fails; a structure crum les, anchors dust and lost,
ut may e time will race itself;
Could I place one final et?
ecause linguists point to history: in any alpha et
Letters are orn, and letters die, and language keeps its strength.
I must complete my sentence:
lood urn and oil red.
