Three Nights Without Sleep

 

1

 

 

got tattoo needled with 1960s

cult play Little Malcolm

at Wakefield little theatre,

late,

Thursday evening.

 

 

came out into coffee

scented air

feeling awful

after Malcolm’s suicide,

 

 

didn’t sleep that night.

 

 

 

2

 

 

travelled to Leeds

the next day during early

morning rush hour

with three-hundred pounds

worth of Dutch lire in my pocket,

bought Colin Wilson’s Charlatan

Messiah’s for a fiver

from a second-hand market stall,

 

 

speed read it on the National

Express

coach to Hull Ferry Port.

 

 

3

 

 

sat on the ferry, 6pm.

watched the natural magic of July sun,

flickering and dancing

outside of oval window

across topology of curlicue ocean,

zigzagging with zany

ticks and dashes, like an apocryphal

Morse-code of light

inside bay

of Yorkshire Wash.

 

 

thought of Jesus.

thought of poetry.

 

 

didn’t sleep that night,

amidst sleeping bags

and lukewarm farts

 

 

for the crossing.

 

 

4

 

 

scored an ounce of skunk

from a café called the Blue

Dolphin

with a French backpacker

taking time out from Uni,

 

 

loving it

that wherever i went

inside the shops, restaurants

and cafés

blond-haired Maitre Ds

would say; Hallo

 

 

i thought of the words

Spaceboy

and Holy.

 

 

skinned up

at the side of a canal

on a graffiti-slurred three-seater

bench

by a cobblestone road.

 

 

we smoked together,

got baked together,

drank Evian . . .

 

 

the sun as hot

as it’s supposed to be.

 

 

5

 

 

strolled around red-

light-district sometime after sunset,

looking to do window shopping.  

 

 

flirted with a courtesan

in her late-teens with a centrefold body

and seriously amazing legs

that went all the way up to her neon-

blue-eyes that flut-fluttered and winked

like the wing of a bird

conveying single syllabic messages

of  yes  yes  yes  

invitations,

channelled

by incarnate Goddess, from p***y-power.

 

 

thought about it.

 

 

didn’t buy.

 

 

6

 

 

munched mushrooms

called Philosopher’s Stones

instead,

sat under an old oak tree

traditional style,

 

 

then

walked into Centrum

buzzing

in the warm-moist-air, amongst anthill

swarms of Saturday night clubbers, trippers,

boozy lads and lasses,

bustling

between buildings that boasted

with grandiloquence

and history.  

 

 

passed Vincent Van Gough’s

house,

and Anne Franks, passed police

lines smoking a joint,

 

 

never saw so many bicycles . . .

 

 

sculptures of lizards

crawled . . .

 

 

7

 

 

sat in Vondel Park

opposite the Flying Pig Hostel

with an Italian looking Dutchman

with an American accent.

 

 

after twenty minutes his face shapeshifted

into semblance of Max Headroom’s,

but with colouration

as red as a vaudeville devil,

complete with rotunded horns that protruded from his

frontalis,

like a maligned ancient Greek God,

like Pan.

 

 

metaphors, and verbs, collapsed,

outside of ordinary alphanumeric mind.

 

 

8

 

 

he tried to sell me pills

produced from a fat fanny pack,

 

 

i wouldn’t buy,

 

 

he tried again . . .

 

 

i still wouldn’t buy.

 

 

then he performed a Mephistophelian

sleight of hand trick

with his cell phone,

covering the Japanese machine

with the one hand he held it in

so that it disappeared from view,

then he rolled his hand over

so i could only see the raised surface bobble

of knuckle bones,

 

 

before he revealed open palm

and no phone . . .

 

 

 

then in an instant he started talking

to a disembodied connection

 

 

with the phone in the other hand.

 

 

i was amazed.

 

 

i laughed.

laughed again.

 

 

thought about Bob

and Jib back home,

 

 

about how

out of all the tall tales

they think i’ve told

 

 

they will never believe

this one,

 

 

never believe

that i was tempted

by the devil one night

stoned,

on a five day vacation

in Amsterdam.

 

 

i didn’t believe it myself.

 

 

i suppressed deep laughter.

a chuckle surfaced.

 

 

 

 

i didn’t sleep that night.     

Reviews

[Jaci]

So vivid. An absolutely amazing three night journey with this write. Love it.