Michael McAloran
Scenes from Nowhere #1-…Often, often from afar. In and out of speech, that's how it appears, that's how it is, to fool the absence into thinking that there was ever anything. But there isn't anything, no, not like that, the other way around. All the same, over and until again, beginning again, ramparts levelled and then the recurrence of it. No reason to argue, if it remains untrue, there'll be nothing either way. It's spoken for, silenced again. Yet out of less, or, perhaps more, rattling in the wind, something whole becomes the fragment, the naught. Nothing less or more splendorous, so they say, but they've never seen, it's never been seen, as if it could be seen, waste and wanton. Collapse and never yet be done, beneath a pit of sky, fruitless hands and the lifeless breathing. Never having been in the first instance, it seems likely, but no, no use in trying to reduce it to that. Night's pastures, something taken away, given back, never reclaimed, what of it… …I can see the streets from here, it hasn't been long, it won't matter, the streets long and seemingly everlasting, until. I'll just sit here, smoking, it might, I'll drink too, all the wine that god sends me. I'll not succumb, there's no place for it, yet there's not much else, in spite of things. The sun might rise, I'll still sit here, it's too plain to describe, other than four white walls and a bed, table, chair and bookshelf; I take my meals elsewhere. All of that, useless fettering, I sleep alone, I drink alone, I smoke alone, I'll just sit here. Wandering about…what. I hold my breath intermittently, seeing if I'll burst, I might burst a blood-vessel, but no. Perhaps a heart-attack might be easier to induce, it could happen, I'll look into it, I will, I always do. There, it's been noted, I'll mend this whipped canine yet, I won't regret it, there's nothing left, often. Whipped? A little extravagant, okay then. But no nothing broken of which I am aware, so I say, and I believe in nothing. I'll see it through, says the naught, say the vapours, the mists, I know that I am lying, I'll exist for nothing, yet already nothing is all that I am. I'll spill my guts, then, if that'll make me happy, I'll be as purposeless as that, I will… …Ah, to leap tied at the neck out through my window in some gesture of violent disgust -ha! And the women, with their hands covering the eyes of their children as they stare on in disbelief. Ah piss, fragment, naught, caved in beauty of a face obliterated. Yet no, better to…what. I'll never be back, either way, at least I'm frank about it. Yes out of less, or perhaps more, nothing, nothing. I'll sit here, I'll dream of my own mercilessness, my own vulgar display, it will be night -it is forever night! I'll rant and rave, curse, but I won't be bitter. I'll be a Christ of my own design, that'll do. Ah there is nothing wrong with it, nothing right and everything, no, there is everything, to be done with it. Chewing up the broken glass and meat of the spill of the guts, pissing one's last breath in some deserted alleyway -enough! That'll be it, I'll not care, I'll still breathe, to a point or not at all, I won't know, I'll shit myself, I won't care, I'll laugh the laughter of the gallows. I'll be found, it won't matter to me, some poor knave will find me, it's noted, to get along, I'll go back, I'll…No… …All of this nothing, these breaths, winds, this night and its ever-recurrence, the die are cast, the die are my own, better out of this than in. Shadowless, limp, stone cold and more beautiful than ever before, so they say, those that say things like that, I'll be a babe again, no, I'll still be nothing, without glamour. I'll be silent, the silence silenced, of more use than ever before, I'll have come and gone, in my own time, I'll seize the day, nothing to it. No answer to the when or why or the whatever, so help me. Someone else will dwell here, it will have meant nothing but to no-one, but to me. Speech or non-speech, here and yet, the sun erased, no pace in these rixt bones. Sudden now, alack, nothing lacking and yet nothing else, translucent, gathered. Dreams are for lesser men, it's been said, I have said it before, I have no place, I have no time, I feel nothing for the flowers of the grave, there's nothing left of me to mourn, I wouldn't mourn for me, I mourn enough, yet it is not the same. Ah the stale night, here again, drinking again, smoking again, smoke in the eyes, false tears, vague, vacant almost, the sky above, no prayers from me it's been settled, that was settled long before now. No, I won't make a holy show of myself, I'll just recount the hours, no I won't, that's wasted time, in the minute, yes, in a minute now I'll rise and sit back down again. There won't be anything else, but for the street, quiet as it is, it is always quiet, it lends to the absurdity, I'll not be moved, I say, there, that's the ticket. I'll move, I'll have to, to empty the old body, whistling as usual, there, I know it now, I'll go back and forth and there will be nothing much, I might as well stare at the four walls, or not, perhaps lay here in the dark, who knows, what matter. Yet there may be days yet, I laugh, I laugh because I am lying, there may be days yet, there will be none and nothing more of this charade, this parade of languishing sterility. No reason to go elsewhere, not like in the old days, I'm done for now, until I rise again, I won't rise, I won't live, how can I not?, I exist. All in all, I can't live, no not anymore, by breach or breath or design, I'll dream of it, a lesser man's curse, stay here I say, I'll break, I'll shatter, there will be bone in the mix, I'll…No no more, no more words, I will speak no more, there'll be nothing, there is nothing more, yet still they arise and then recede. Nothing in that, I make notes, I don't sleep, I don't awaken, there is weather as always and the streets, variable, quiet, yet variable… …No human contact, it's the only way, I see it no other way, miserable wretches all, I'd spit as soon as be kind to one, bury the head in the sand, yet there would be no fear of it, I'd spit in the eye as soon as be kind, a nightmare, disastrous, I concede, I never do. There's been none of that, not since I did, not since it was done, it was ever thus, I lie. I'll laugh again, there'll be laughter and wretched bones. There'll be the laughter or tears, I can't think of whose, perhaps there'll be none, there'll be mud in the eyes yet, a spark, something, oh I never know, I can't go back, I can't stomach it, not the coming or the going, proof by extraction, shadow by default, as if, no, shadow my arse, I was never shadow, I was never a dreamer, head in a vault of eclectic colourings, snap snap, fingers snapping, hence in the long run there will be night, yet it won't be dark, it won't be light, there'll be enough of that, I don't know, if at all, I'll stay silent, yet there'll be no scattered silences, there'll be a time for that, if I look upon it, if I evade it, if I close the door one last final time, having the knowledge of the induced heart-attack in my skull, that'll be the ticket, I'll lay there in my cot and drink my wine and that will be it, I'll slide easily, I'll not be surrounded, not by any of them, I'll sleep, it will be done, there's nothing I can't do, I will. And the way of it, yes having been found, perhaps the reek of me will drift out under the door, yet I'll be clean, I'll wash my bag of bones, under the arms and the crotch and the arse, one can't be disrespectful, perhaps I'll buy a new suit, a fresh shirt, I'll wear a good tie, I will, yes that's it, I'll be dressed up for the fair, perhaps there might be sun, night even, I'm not particular, it won't matter anyhow, nothing matters anyhow, I haven't mattered yet, never will, not even in love's chambers where she used to dwell, long afar, long gone now, ghosts of catacombs long lost, dead indeed, never saw it either, I never knew, I'll never know…. …Ah spit, nothing there either, a vague trace, a vague trace of the winds of feeling, I'll drink my wine, it will be sublime, no, that serves only to carry me on, I'll spill my wine down the sink, I'll open another bottle, I'll drink from that, straight down into the gullet, I'll sit in my chair at my table, I'll listen for something, the voices voiceless, echoing spasms of subtle speech, non-speech, non-time, there will be a time, so I say, not likely. I'll empty out my head, I'll take a shovel to it, a grave, I'll dig a grave, aggrandized, no flies on me though, I'll dig a grave of silences, worms in the skull, I'll listen for them, as if they could be heard or spoken of, their whisperings, their silences. Hands dead and nothing less will suffice, never having begun, never having followed, counter-speech. That's the way, it still beats, I don't want it to beat yet it still beats, what now, at the beginning never having ended, so I say, so the echoes say, I can't count them. Broken by stillness in a death dream of accord, of sun, of having to go on, of night endless, figuratively, nonsense all off it, the slate wiped clear and yet never knowing of it, dare I say, I taste the words on my tongue, lies, all of it, caring for nothing, feeling less and less…. …Well to be come undone, lapsing to and fro, stillness of the frost settling, I remember the field where we lay, the soil was ploughed, frozen, we lay there anyhow and watched the clear night sky, I in she, no way back now, no not ever. No, no time for the tears welling in the eyes, for the flesh abandoned, this is of another time. I'll not sleep tonight, I'll just sit here with my wine, listen to the echoes, watching the vapours, a fool, no I don't regret. All of this and still to become undone again, I'll swing yet, yet I thought it was all settled, I'll sleep it off, there, it's decided, I'll let it all slide, I'll have forgotten in the morning, I'll start again, I won't, I'll have the choice, it won't matter a damn either way, I'll still burn, what's left of me, and no other way about it and no way to get on with it, seeing no way, a curse, following through, beating on the walls, this or that, a flimsy response, not like the noose, I'll shut up now, I'll cease, no-one is listening anyhow, nothing changing from the day to day, the night to night, just the breath, fluctuating needs. I haven't eaten today, I don't care for it, perhaps I'll starve myself, no, too much time, a horrible business. Yet the embers of she, that's not what this is about, yet the embers of she, no, I can't go back, worse things have happened, I'm silenced, teeth in the grass from a broken jaw, lapsing again, falling silent, head to toe in nothingness, it will never again be said, I love you, I never did, I thought I did, she loved me and I, and now… …Ah what the sun could give me back if it shone, deeply in this, taking me back this night, no, a windbag, I'll talk out of my arse until the sheep are sheared, ah yes, the old days, I hated it, I hated them, those were the times of dread, I should have taken the shears to him, I'd have done time for him, the bastard, I should have, I should have gotten away sooner, but no, not a penny to my name, where could I have gone, what else would have become of me, but this nothing. Ah spare the child and bless the rod, look at the cut of me, I'm practically dead, yes I'll take another one, there, that's the ticket, the price of it, I'll be gathered up for nothing, gathered bones of nothing. And but for the sod turned there'll be no extra effort, the poor sod won't know, he'll just do his job, digging away, till it's over with, much like myself, just fading away, it was never there to be lost, it never had, there never was, no meaning, no, not love, no, nor the chandelier heart, the extras, her legs spread, the pale ashen flesh of her, the drapery of her red hair and the caress of her voice, and such words, no, I'm never going back there again, it's finalized, I'll be, no not of her, I've had enough, no nothing, lapsed again, in the dregs, in the silence of it, listening to my breath, I'll not scream, I'll take it gracefully, there'll be nothing, that's all I'll be, all there is or is not, they never knew for sure, I'll never know, it has come to this, so be it… #11- Snare biting at The lung Absence without Colour Hammer of split light And the blood Drained The shadow emptied Stripping the skin Of light Spasm of expelled Breath The hand emptied Silenced #12- Syringe tears At the edge of the Sun's jugular Spitting out the dead Teeth of hollowed Purpose Now and forever Rasp of raw blush/ scythe Body ablaze Body of sand Michael McAloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent work has appeared in various anthologies & print and online zines in the U.S, U.K, India & Australia, including Carcinogenic Poetry, PMI, Calliope Nerve, The Delinquent, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Pratishedhak, Prathamata, Danse Macabre, amphibi.us, The Plebian Rag, 1000th Monkey, Full of Crow, Gloom Cupboard, Gutter Eloquence, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Psychic Meatloaf, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Mastodon Dentist, Nothing, No-one, Nowhere, Meat Songs, ditch, etc. He has also published a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media) & 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A full length collection of short poems, 'Attributes', was published by 'Desperanto', (NY), in 2011 and another full-length collection, 'Of Dead Silences' is forthcoming from VOX Press in 2012.
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