Pill Girl

by David Mac

And her eyes,

exploding into black holes,

sucking everything inwards.

Her perverse smile,

we her children,

laughing,

playing,

red-faced and

mad.

The dirty sun,

wrung out,

dripping in a desolate sky,

buildings quivering,

undulating,

trembling up

above us.

And she screams,

burns like glue,

as cars pass,

shuffle,

cars with people,

humans, things,

creatures, meat,

heads, faces, minds,

stuffed full of milky souls that

exit out the back of their necks.

Then car wrecks,

collisions,

crashes,

bent and buckled metal,

shattering windscreens.

The town grins,

eats us whole.

But she is

high as birds,

half moon half mirror,

the hurtful planet curling to her song,

her oozing note,

and we all hear it

booming up to our bony homes,

our ragged lives,

and we clap and go

wild.

Stomp!

This night is ours.

Wet Death Bingo

by David Mac

He said he wanted to fuck the grungy Goth girl who had moved in upstairs. I told him, “Then just go and fuck that Tim Burton bitch.”

He wailed, “But I’m married!’”

I explained “Ack, marriage is a big bag o’ doom.”

Then he told me about some Sasquatch bastard who wore a dress and

had great furry arms and black eyeballs that giggled like wet death bingo

who had moved in down the hall.

“These flats are coming to an end,” he said. “They’re going downhill fast.”

I reminded him about the sexy bit from the second floor, and how about

us stabbing our hard purple poems through her letterbox while she drank

orange juice and frigged herself blind with celebrity magazines.

He shook his head sadly and sucked the world in through his cemetery teeth. He hissed and his eyes looked like dead spiders and broken insects.

Then he took a sip of Guinness.

I screamed at the milky froth that was left above his upper lip, but I could

tell he was having his waxy fantasies. They were melting like dirty

candles in his mixed-up mind: strange terror, strangling sex, and all the

girl eyes dripping,

like the hateful flowers they were.

Come Back, Heart Shape

David Mac

Yeah, look up…

The heart shapes were floating all over town. Some looked like balloons in the sky. Some were carried on the breeze like feathers, fluttering, twisting. Some spiralled and eddied like leaves in a twirl.

We only watched them. What else could we do?

There were pink ones, red ones, white ones. Those are the colours you expect to see. I mean, you don’t expect to see a brown heart up there, huh?

Think of Love. Think of it, like in the cartoons or movies. Think of that Love Aura. What colour you got?

Yeah.

Everyone’s heart just upped and left. Just rose out that day, that first day. That’s when it happened. You remember?

I remember opening my windows and just looking, seeing them all over town. They looked like a swarm of butterflies: hundreds, thousands, millions of little heart shapes in the distance.

And I turned on the news and saw this was happening all over the place: London, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff; and I saw it was also happening in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Delhi, Honk Kong, Sydney, New York, Mexico… Blah, blah, blah; heart, heart, heart!

It was just going on all over the place, everywhere. Man!

Hey, I guess the hearts had just had enough, got tired waiting around forever. Hey, I guess they set themselves free. Beautiful, okay!

So I went out into the street.

Everyone was out there, looking up at the sky, looking up at all those heart shapes, alive, bobbing, like they were trying to get somewhere.

I saw a heart shape land on a little girl’s shoe. It flattened out like a damp leaf but seemed to rub and purr. She picked it up and held it in her palm. She showed it to her mother, then she blew it away. And, as if the heart shape was actually grateful, I saw it gently kiss the girl’s cheek before lifting back up into the sky with all the rest. It drifted off and up

I held one in my hand: smooth, soft, velvet, light like paper. It tickled my skin. I stroked it and felt it shudder and wriggle, snug and comfortable, little papery heart. I sensed it seem to sigh, to gasp, lament, lost for something. Aw!

And I tell you that everything shall rise, everything shall echo out and flow, caught on the air: rivulets, wavelets, undulating, precise, beatific, cool currents unseen, tingling, fresh, set in harmony… This sweetness has no weight!

The way thoughts can stir, hang heavy, then float up...

Like a poem in the morning…

Over traffic and rush hour, dead-end jobs, sadness, happiness…

Like notes from a solo instrument…

Upwards, upwards. Gotta get higher. Gotta poke the sky right. Hang onto that old heaven.

When we saw those airborne hearts we turned fools to ourselves. We thought everything was gonna be okay now. And I saw an old man with some old tears in his old eyes. A kid just stopped playing and focused up. A young mother was lost for words.

Yeah, that’s it, that’s right: everything is lost for words, sometimes.

But we thought: it’s gonna be okay.

But now, getting back, to the colours of the hearts that day. Remember I said they were all pinks and reds and white, kind of love colours? Well, my heart shape came out.

I felt it rise up from my chest, piercing through, spiking out into the day.

It seeped out, hot and angry, violent stabbing, tearing through my flesh. It stung and throbbed, pulsated and oozed. I knelt on the pavement and waited for the thing to come. I shook and trembled, felt it writhe.

And once it was out, the pain stopped. I looked up at my own heart shape and saw.

Blackened heart shape, ashen and dirty. That heart shape was no good! and bitter! My heart shape was a villain!

I watched it float up in the air with the rest of them. I saw it touch the others and stain them with its filth, pollute those poor, good clean hearts with its vileness.

And other people saw it was my heart that was doing this and they all turned to look at me.

‘It was his!’ said the little girl.

I ran back inside my place and looked out the window. I saw the beautiful hearts all turning, all changing and becoming grubby and rotten by my malevolent heart shape. I watched the sky turn black, all over town, the horizon, the panorama, the skyline.

One foul heart shape, corrupting, infecting, spoiling the rest. Everything on fire and burning. All over the earth it spread. Across the landscapes, continents, the colour was spreading, awful. Blackness. Blackness. Blackness. That was the first day, all that time ago.

The sun is blocked out now. It’s cold.

And all we do is wait.

Filly

by David Mac

She sold weed

That I would go to buy

And she had horses

Stables

That I would love to ride

After work

I’d go there

And we’d smoke

Laugh

Her posh voice a trill

Her big house

Something I’d never know

And then

Stoned

She’d let me have a ride

Not on her

But her horses

And I’d canter

And trot

Around the paddock

As the sun stabbed away

Feel the thick animal hum

And smile

Two beasts

Content in the world

Together

In the dusk

One knew no better

One did

But both were left alive for now

Happy

To be free

Wild

Natural so

Real

And as the sky turned to oil

The shadows braved more

Than men would

Ever know

1 Litre of Russian Standard

by David Mac

I was reading Dostoevsky don’t

ask me to pronounce him

when the woman next door began screaming or

singing

So I took a walk to the Bargain Booze shop

and went inside

The bottles behind the smash-proof/bulletproof (?) glass all

watched me enter

They had faces like shiny calm monks

blessing me, not

judging my life

But I chose the only one I could find that had an

angry face, not

holy or even a believer in God

And the Indian lady reached up high and

got it down for me and asked

“Is that all?”

“Yes” I told her and she said

“You drink every day?” and I replied

“Better than at night”

She asked “What’s wrong with the

day?”

“Too much noise” I explained “Too much

going on

everywhere

all over the place”

“That’s £12.70” she declared and I

handed her various

notes

coins with

monetary value in the

correct currency

the berries of life

“Keep the change love” I said as I

walked off but there

wasn’t any

There never is these days

And the monks watched me leave. I

think they wished me well

Stirring Through Thoughts That Mean Absolutely Nothing

by David Mac

Pissing into a wine bottle

At 3A.M.

And outside there are

Things

I will never care about:

Howling streets

Puked kebabs

Pissed-up doorways

Hungry taxis

Staggering heels

Dirty fucks in dirty alleys

And good old cans

Rattling in the gutters

On through the night

The hard bone moon

A flashing blade

Smiling in the dark

We are all out there

Like we are all in here

Finding new ways to live

Old ways die

Mostly they are the same

But at times

Like this

We can do neither

As I get back into bed

Pull up the sheets

The shadows come too

And you stir

You stir

My God

How you stir

Red Lady

by David Mac

Red lady lay down

This life isn’t worth a damn

And I’ve been bored forever

Red lady lay

You still have it in you

Even though I do not

In the supermarket today

Meat for sale

People walk past each other

And never say a word

They never smile

And it feels so good

People are so pointless

Red lady the birds

The birds are selfish

They take what they can get

Red lady have you got

Charms in your window?

Trinkets up your cunt?

People look so ugly when they yawn

Coz sleep is death rehearsal

Red lady they’re teaching

Young girls to lick lollipops

Somewhere in the southern hemisphere

And cats cross the road at dawn so well

Red lady I don’t dislike you

I just like me better

I don’t dislike your company

I’ll always prefer my own

Red lady I never asked

To be born

But so what

If I did?

Stomp

by David Mac

We laugh about how

she

stomped on my

skull on

the kitchen

floor

Ha-ha how

the blood

leaked

out of

my head

When time is

long it’s

okay

laugh

about

violence

At the

time

things aren’t

always so

funny

At the

time they

hurt like

hell

There’s still

blood on

her kitchen

floor

and on her

heels

(bits of

my brain)

It’s okay I

like to

leave

reminders

of where

love

once

was not

Wilt?

by David Mac

If I bring you flowers

will you kill them

or merely smell them?

Will you smile

or commit suicide?

Will you kiss me or

fall into the earth?

Will you, if I bring you flowers

call me by my name

or any name?

Fatso?

Motherfucker?

Will you go to war

plan a murder

form an evil pact?

I don’t know but

I purchase them from

the petrol station

their innocent petals

and stems

bunched in my

mortal hands

Closed

by David Mac

We’d wait for the shop to open

where we could buy

two bottles of red for seven quid

and two Polish beers for two

and next to the shop was a place

that decorated and designed

headstones:

REST IN PEACE MUM

MY BELOVED SON

LOVE YOU FOREVER

Blah blah blah good riddance

And we’d look in that window

dreaming about death

as the rush-hour traffic

pushed on through

to nowhere

at all

David Mac’s words can be found in many mags, journals, sites, ‘zines, and blogs. He’s had collections published by Erbacce Press, Knives Forks & Spoons, Writing Knights Press, Ten Pages Press, Lulu, as well as various self-published collections. He lives in the UK, deep in the Bedfordshire Hell. He contemplates death. Sometimes he contemplates life.