The Station

The Station

The station was nearly empty even though it was the rush hour. Sunshine was trying to break through the mass of drifting white and grey clouds.

I looked up at the various irregular shapes and forms in the clouds.

I stared for so long that I missed my train.

I stayed there all day.

Trains emptied commuters on the platform and took up others to carry away. Sparks on the train tracks leapt up into the cold air.

When I was a child I use to like to identify birds, cats, faces, hands, moon crescents or the outline of complicated buildings.

As a child this was a game or casual indulgence.

As the song goes,

“That joke isn’t funny anymore….”

Chris Bird

The Secret

The Secret

The secret machine defined and created people’s lives. From tower blocks, offices, factories and hospitals the shadows it created stepped onto the streets.

Even ghosts collected in the forests on the city limits fused in mist and fog.

Shimmering figures waited on every grey roof top. Owls watched in the midnight hours as the machine hummed and glowed.

One patient in the psychiatric hospital glanced out of the ward window. She saw the machine floating in a mass of cogs, wheels, wires and tubes high above the city.

It was only a brief glimpse.

She didn’t tell the psychiatrist.

Chris Bird

The New Language

The New Language

There were self - inflicted scars on my hands and on my arms. The red patches of darkened skin were sore and irritating. I imagined myself as a puppet who had fallen off the controlling strings of family and faith. My skin was my outer defense but was it defending me from the world or from myself.

The marks on my skin would gradually evolve into a complex map of streets and alleys. The marks would become a code, a guide, an index crawling on my cold white skin.

The marks were linked to the movement of distant planets and worlds across the universe.

The stars themselves clung to the outlines of the cuts on my fingers and palms. The sunset and sunrise began to observe and follow the sequence of damage and harm on my arms.

Soon horizons of bright and distant constellations surrounded my injuries.

I needed to feel pain and the distraction of harm , the relentless cruelty of the world was mirrored on the surface of my skin.

At midnight ghost children came beside the marks to marvel at the wounds. The icy night

waited for the next cut , the next injury.

Chris Bird

Three Words

The Invention

She lived in a faraway tower. At first she recorded random sequences that seemed to provide a way out of feeling lost and vulnerable. Then she used the codes and numbers to invent a complicated machine made of steel, iron and glass. It was covered in screens, levers and glass. The machine was at one and the same time fragile and powerful.

After building the machine she sighed with exhaustion. At night the machine had emerald and jade lights that blinked like dawn stars.

Scattering lights shone from deep within the complex machine.

Steadily a new sound emanated from the machine. It was a distorted purring sound that gradually grew filling the room.

Then the sound faded into total silence.

She looked silently at the machine and the machine soundlessly returned her gaze.

After a long period of quiet the machine spoke

“I invented you” it said to the women.

Chris Bird

Summer

The summer was not a season or period of time. The summer was in reality a young person of either gender.

The Summer was a hopeful, temporary moment like a brief glance.

Hemmed in between Spring and Autumn the Summer faced long working hours including weekends and Bank Holidays. The Summer sadly suffered from soft coloured bullying and intimidation.

Thus the Summer wept.

Weeping so continuously the Summer caused tearful rivers streaming from the bright core in moving channels.

Sunshine blinded the aged, decrepit plants and trees.

London was indifferent.

Made of skyscrapers, bridges of shadow, castles and spires, supermarkets, offices, graveyards, hospitals and schools what did London care either way.

Thus the Summer wept feeding the dark world in everyday streets.

From shopping centres, alleyways, markets, churches and stadiums, motorways and canals, cliffs and hills the Summer broke down weeping, weeping inconsolably with glittering endless tears.

The Summer cried at night, in the dawn, at dusk and even in the day. The Summer prayed between tears for Autumn to arrive.

But it never did. It never did.

 Chris Bird

Admission

The strange machine was hard to detect.

It sat above the complex city in complete silence.

The smoke of chimneys and the mist of summer hid the complicated mass of cogs, pipes, tubes, levers, screens and wheels.

The machine produced endless codes and symbols relentlessly controlling the ebb and flow of the huge, bustling city.

Commuters like ants swarmed hopelessly around the smoky bus and train stations.

They didn’t understand that their lives were not authentic, meaningful or real. The pulse of the day throbbed steadily from deep inside the structure.

The streets were just a map, a shifting outline planned deliberately by the machine.

The city dwellers could barely guess that the shining machine controlled everything however trivial.

The machine in the clouds was all seeing , all knowing.

One day a girl in a psychiatric hospital looked up into the sky and saw the machine.

“You are delusional” it whispered to her.

Chris Bird