{55}

Romantic love is a complicated affair.

Marvin and Leon at the pub.  Outside, under the hot African stars.

The night was excessively humid, even a thin T-shirt was too much to bear.  They were both by this stage quite drunk.  But not that crazy type of drunk that comes when you mix alcohol and speed.  They were merely mostly inebriated.  A flight of stairs ascended before them, people passing on either side, as the outdoor drinking hole began filling up with waves of people.  Marvin turned around as the noises and sweet smells of youth and alcohol wafted around his head.  His eyelids slightly widened, he half-mumbles to Leon “Look at that!”

About 16 or 17 years young.  Pale skin, bright red hair.  A bit too slim.  A slightly baggy white, blue and light brown dress.  A silver crucifix played flashing games with the light, between the subtle clean curves of her sleight breasts.

Skin young and wholesome like fresh cool milk. 

Descending the stairs self-consciously, eagerly, she tries to see who looks at her - not noticing Marvin and Leon behind the throng of bright-eyed drunkenness.  Eyes alight.  She recognises someone sitting nearby to the inconspicuous Marvin and Leon.  Her nose screws up as she waves with a smile, and makes her way through the crowd to sit with friends.

“I want that” said Marvin (Watch the wolf).

“Schizophrenic” said Leon sipping slowly at his whisky.

“Why do you say that?”

“Just looks like it.”

Staring fixedly for a while, Marvin gets up and goes over to the other pretty girl sitting in the same group that the redhead has joined, and slowly manoeuvres his way into the conversation.

While his mouth does a mundane metaphysical mutter to the girl next to him, Marvin sneaks a quick look out the corner of his wild eye (canine prowling in the forest undergrowth).  He notices that she too would look at him from time to time, though not hiding it.  Just as she looked away, he would ambiguously throw a morsel of conversation in her direction then continue, seemingly oblivious to her eyes - emerald as distant unseen Ireland.  A neverland of ancient mystery.

She was rather quiet, though not by nature.  Rather she absorbed the scenes around her, trying to catch the rhythm of the words that bounced crazily in the jagged heat.  She had only been in town two days, fresh out of a convent;  she uncrossed her legs, and crossed them again in the other direction.

            Green dreams of baby plants,
            seeming small beneath the Earth
            hello world, I'm coming out
            above the ground
            to feel the light!

She was named Maxine;  and with Marvin, Carol, and three or four others, went to Carol's place after closing time, and one of the others produced some joints.  Maxine's awareness was on edge, constantly watching.  Not swimming thru the kaleidoscopic haze of chemical concoction, laughter and obsessed passions that befell most others that found themselves in this dark crazy, colourful, colourful, hell-hole of a place.

She didn't even have the inevitable cigarette hanging off her lip or finger;  leaving its scarful stain, thick like an oil-slick on the mind.  They took the joints to a park across the road, and lit up.  Marvin climbed one of two large trees under which the rest of the group sat, and smoked his joint from there.

The others  passed the rest around amongst themselves, except for Maxine, who just smiled and passed the joint on, looking sceptically as its tendrilled curl of smoke wove its way towards her nostrils.  She wrinkled her nose and got up, walked for a bit, and then started running across the park.

She got to the other side and stopped, turned around and started running again past the trees and the small group, then headed in the other direction.

            So now she stands like living light
            straight and slim as she wavers the wind
            rippling gold petals
            in the light  and air

                                        and sin.

A flash of an eye in the moonlight, and Marvin springs from the tree, landing on all fours, then accelerates as he gradually straightens with a solid running speed;  his form heaves as a beast under the excited African stars.

Breathes - dark and heavy with the thundering of military boots over the thick grass and uneven ground.  The pounding of a red heart, and pulsing blood churning through bulging veins.  Her dress, white and ghost-like, running beneath the immortal stars.  Looking up with young bright eyes, giggle-smiling.  She hasn't seen the shadows move.  The wing-tips of her dress tease the hot wind, and it seems as though her light boned limbs are more carried by her, than carry her.

            Nourishing deep her talons in the Earth
            with the weeds around
            in the ground and the night
            where plants come alive to tell us their plight:

            They rise mocking and screaming
            at her new born form,
            their jagged leaves of poison
            and choking roots of thorn;
            seeping closer
            to her living ground.

She crumpled beneath his mass as he tackled her hard.  Turning, she looks around quickly up at him.  His teeth are the colour of the moon, and his mouth, a deep, deep red.  Eyes racing, half hidden in purple silhouettes.  Her hand swings up in an attempted slap, but he grabs it fast, feeling the wavering strength in her arm.

He grins a toothy smile and opens his mouth.  Struggling beneath him he is neither hard nor soft as the kiss is just a little too short.  Desperation comes over her face, and he smiles again, this time though, with only half his face.  He gets up off her and goes back to where the group are sitting under the trees.  Saying no word, he just looks at her for the rest of the night.  Just his eyes gleem.

Before long it would be sunrise, so the creatures scurry and scuttle for their holes, as the first hints of pink, crown the distant mountains.

            How she glows;
            talling naked,
            smooth fleshed body
            a tasty morsel
            for the hook-leaf weeds.

            Days are nights
            and every morning
            is a rebirth in the world of Spring.

            Her flowers blossomed
            and caught dew
            still new and ripe;
            and firm and soft
            her rounded stem,
            just young and 'flowering
            in her virgin Spring.

            As the weeds crept in,
            gnawing on the earth
            still closer to her delicate stem;
            there came friendly gardener,
            to lift and keep her in his garden;
            in her own safe pot;
            to grow in all her vanity and pride.

Being evicted did not concern Marvin, because he had run out of money anyway, so couldn't pay his rent.  He really had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and had nothing except one cheap bag of tobacco.  A gust of wind swirled down the early evening street, and toyed with a bright yellow plastic bag, throwing it into a muddy puddle.  Marvin in a muddle, scratched his chin and felt the cold night close in.

The streetlights came on and Marvin began walking.  Day-glo painted army boots stamped solidly, as he wound his way between hovel-castles that glittered in the hot electrified night.  He stomped carelessly across the littered road, sucking on a hand-rolled cigarette, easing his way towards a double-story house.

This home was large, and the upper-most corner-most window was dark.  He knocked on the door and asked for Maxine.  She was out.  Don't know where. Don't know when she will be back.  Marvin backed off into the street and looked up to the window.  A creeper crept up the side of the house. . .  opened the window and slipped silently into the darkness.  A Summer thunderstorm rumbled its arrival in the distance.

            So the young green plant
            stood growing
            for quite a while yet still
            and blossomed in her fullest radiance

            but the time had come
            as the weeds came gasping closer
            to her young lithe stem
            her wet leaves shining

            and pollen of pure red bright
            then choked her
            one cold raining night.

Maxine ascended the stairs a little later whilst producing a key from inside her skirt.  She opened the large brass padlock on her door, her small nose twitching at something strange in the air.  As the light came on, with a  flash of bright crimson she removed her raincoat, and noticed his long form lying comfortably on the bed.  Tobacco smoke curled and stained the air as the complex array of aromas filtered into her upturned nose;  he stares at her.

“Hello” she said quietly, as she hid behind a pile of disorganised papers on her desk, that soon exposed her vulnerability once they assumed a neat pile.  He moved

towards her, kicking over a glass of water in the process, yet dragging her attention from it with his lips - his mouth - igniting her flaring nostrils;  crumpling beneath him without the feintest resistance.  Her essence, filigree of richest Treasure.

            As the sun rose
            on the next born day
            the gardener came walking
            to his compost heap
            of browns and greens and grey

            peered down
            and found the lifeless plant
            its golden petals turned to brown

            slowly he reached out
            held its withered stem  
            inhaled her pestilent pollen

            perfumed decaying wet
            with drops of dew
            crumbling to the earth

            ...birth...