{63}

The door slammed in Marvin's face.  Yet he could somehow almost see Maxine's face, still;  on the other side of the chipped-paint door.  Green eyes;  dry of emotion, void of any understandable feeling.  Over the past year, curiosity had turned to excitement, romance;  love.  After a time,  passion had escaped the bounds of safety, into the realm of fear which brooded anger, thick and sardonic.  Loss.  Then came madness - turmoil;  and passion had its turn again.  And now the emotion had been stripped of any colour, and it's textures welled up inside, searching for release.

Vain.

The door slammed in his face.  The blood of her virginity had been smeared on the sheets some stolen night.  And from within her had awoken an appetite which was unleashed as a flood.  After satisfying herself on Marvin, she had cuckolded him several times, to his best friend and worst enemy in the same week, not restraining her new found ambition to men alone.  Then she had been found out, and from there, the situation went spinning into ever widening arcs of bewildered chaos.

What was at one point young inspirational and innocent love, had become a strange power game.  The bonds of normality, stripped away.

Sex, adultery, passion, melancholy.  Some people call it love.  The door slammed.  Moments at her face, green eyes vain with jealousy, coddled eyes of ecstasy, livid blazing emeralds.  Agony... Enough!  No longer shall that face haunt my evenings and grace my morning.

Slam.

Evening wind yells obscenities at the Earth.  Shuffles appear at the windows of obscure houses, muffling any embryo of light. 

Clouds hurry over stagnant buildings, crested with Church-spirals growing skyward, in search of angelic wings of wind and clouds.

Flecks of rain specked hard on Marvin's jacket and formed rivers down his long-since-shaven face.  Skin taught with speed-eaten wiry flesh.  Hollow cheeks of searching;  rivers meander throughout his sleuthing body, then run over his boots, draining some of the bright paint into the gutter with wet-cold streams, faded from feeling.

Boots issued to some soldier.  Ironically multi-coloured on the feet of free-love.  The red now flowing brown with the tramping mud of road-frown.  Avenues, black in the night, glistening beneath star-like streetlights.  Marvin tripped as the sole of his boot broke half-open. (slam).  He sat down on a low wall and looked at the grin, gaping at him mockingly from his boot.  Feeling his fingers inside it, he rips off the sole - then limps on, kicking over a few rubbish bins, spilling their guts to the rain.  Eventually the other sole has to be ripped off too, so that his walk can be balanced.

Marvin met Freddie at the tavern and moved into his kitchen.  Freddie had a mean nose-ring, a mean motor-bike, and an even meaner leather jacket. . . as well as a three-inch-high yappy Chihuahua for a pet.  Marvin and Freddie decided to paint the kitchen with spray-paint:  red, yellow and green.  All over the walls, the dishes, the windows, the light bulb, the ‘fridge, the stove, everywhere.  Marvin felt much better.  (Slam!).

Mother?  Do you know where your children are tonight?

Lover?  Do you care to find comfort in the night?

Brother! Brother! Brother!  Which of us is wrong, are any of us ever right? .  Must we never flex our muscles in the spirit of the game, strive towards the goal, the victors of the ever present life-fight?  Winning, surely, has to be sane?

{64}

            Where blackness lurks and silence looms
            the shadows lurch apart

            (a grinding sound)

            how it feels to grow steadily apart

            a deep red pound
            a livened pulse of rage

            tormented conquering           

            this is without white
            there is no white

            I cannot see white
            or light
            my will

            my strengthening will
            I close my eyes slowly           

            without anger
            I turn           

            away

{65}

The road climbs, wet up the mountain, slinking and winding upwards in a tarmac meander.  The sky is soaked by midnight rain, and all are ready for a journey.  Skidding tires squeak as a vehicle comes to a halt at the bottom of the hill. 

Growling aloud, the machine-beast's single-eye glares at the path before it  The other headlight seemingly lost in a scrap with the concrete scenery.

Suddenly the car door opens and expels Freddie.

The noise coming from inside the chariot of drunken jollilities is lost in the rain-wind, as Freddie grins at the night.  Nose-ring in place and biker-jacket, semi-symbol of Anarchy, born upon his back like a rusty suit of armour;  but the challenge tonight is a duel with the night:

Freddie is Car-surfer King.  He straddles the bonnet like a rodeo prince and bangs hard on the tin-sounding vehicle, as the engine bucks its rider.  Up the bending road they accelerate, man and his mount, enthralled in the rain, cleansed now of a stagnant life of grey suits and boredom, which almost trapped him once.  No chance of that ever happening again.

The top of the road has been conquered as a loud 'Whoop' emanates from inside the vehicle. Victoriously Freddie leaps from the bonnet of the car before it halts, triumph careening through his mighty vocal trumpet.  Abraham looks ominous from the driver's seat of the now partly restored Capri;  as Carol, Leon Maxine, and Marvin cheer out once more at the deep bow that Freddie makes in the spot-head-light.  Abraham toys with the accelerator, and 'one-eye' grumbles inwardly, impatiently awaiting orders.

Freddie does a cabaret in the drunken rain, which pours out the sky like bottles of Cabernet;  pouring into falling waterwalls.  Cool volcanoes of molten emotion.  The biker jacket spins around Freddy's head, then lets go his hand and the jacket spins down the high mountain-side to more cheers and the bombastic boom of Freddie:  “This is my sacrifice to the memory of the cow that lived and died, skinned and crucified, as it became a symbol of phallic domination, holy martyr of the Churches of Christ who was once called Pan. . .”  Freddie wobbles and nearly loses his balance, then stands up, spittle dripping and mixing with the rain that flows down skew-eye grins, with glee falling-dripping around him.  “Hare Krishna!”

Stripping to his Buddha belly (which is quite considerable), he reveals a tattoo of the jolly Roger, dark in the wetness.  An iron skull swings across his hairy chest from 'round his neck, catching the reflection of headlights in the rain-shattered silence.  Dreams like rhythm.  'One-eye' growls then lurches forward, as Freddie screams free love obscene from the front of the car, swaying down the hillside (mountain-glide).  Downhill is faster:  As they reach the bottom he leaps off;  yelling wolf-jowls to the stinging storm and the void that in shadowed moments gives howls of creeps.  Once more the Car-surfer King is triumphant.

“Its too easy” says the now naked warrior, wet and scraggling to his audience, “so, now I stand on the corner of the hood - on just one foot - and the car must swerve”.  Carolina says that maybe he has had enough - laughter sardonic from Marvin as he tries to restrain her tongue with his, unfortunately mostly unsuccessfully (to the harrumph of Carolina who skulks in the sulks of delicious

delirium).  “Positions please!” yells Abraham, as the Capri then turns around.  Ready to surf up the mountain.

The sky is falling.

Freddie places his bare feet, balancing wet on the edge above the burning headlight, and tyres scream in collusion with the plot.  Joy is surprise.  Ultimately challenging death, pushing back the extremities of the Universe in fearless rage.  Seeing where the screaming boundaries of reality lie.  And if they lie, then what truth is still beyond them?

This sky is falling.

As momentum is gathered, Freddie lifts one foot and poises his arms outward as if they were the wings of an oversized angelic figurine - and the car swerves again.  Nerves on edge, Carolina screams to the rain, and naked toes are all that balance Freddie above the light.  Arms lifting in the poise of a gruesome gargoyle ballerina.  A moment of entropy suspended.  A purging of fear.  ?How to redeem the insanities we've inherited, the curse of man, the original sin.  Something has got to give: 

But between where the Earth sets, and heaven rises;

lies foreverland,

where colours rave and psychedelic whirlpools play;

'twixt shadowy monsters

and high noble Kings;

is the land of faere where sounds sing songs

and colours are the chorus.

And the smallest inch

between heaven and hell

as the magic jar balances

 (inside it a soul)

tilts

and falls to the ground

shattering endless echoes,

and now you're alone with absolute entropy.

{66}

Freddie got a few stitches in his head for his troubles, but everyone still acclaimed him Car-surfer King.  In fact, the thorny patchwork on his head were not the last stitches Freddie wore proudly like a crown.

After smashing up a couple of chairs and tables in a bar during the very same week as the car-surfing championships, he was asked to leave by a little-round manager with little-round glasses, a neat tie, , , and a polite little in-your-ass attitude.

At first Freddie looked astonished - but why can't I break the chairs?  Then he grinned a gape-toothed grin, took his beer-bottle by the neck and smashed it across his own forehead with a yell of “AAAaaarrrgh!... thuDD... You! little man, you can't ask me to leave!  I'm tough!”.

Freddie eyed the manager, blood spewing out the wound and meandering down his forehead.  He swayed once, twice, , , and then toppled over, breaking another chair in the process (almost as if to prove a point), before collapsing in a heap on the floor.  A deep red pool of blood gathered around his head - coagulating in a devilish halo.

After coming home from the Doctor, again, he sat on his bed, breaking a glass whisky bottle in the process, and ending up with a third set of stitches.  The last lot, precariously arranged in a neat round crown of their own - on his left buttock.