A recent NYC Midnight competition required a ‘rhyming story’ of 600 words. The organisation stressed that whilst entries could come in the form of a ‘poem’ the emphasis should be on ‘story’. I’m really not sure how one would write a ‘rhyming story’ that didn’t satisfy a reasonably popular idea of what a poem was … but anyway ….

I’m having trouble remembering what the specifics of my assignment was. It had to have something revolving around reputation and also joy. But there was something else in there that I can’t recall. Never mind.

I thought, initially, that I might be well suited to the task and, indeed, my first draft showed all the promise of a Coleridge epic. But it was about 700 words too long, and by the time I’d cut it down to size it had lost most of its meaning (the ‘story’ in other words) and all my favourite bits about rape and pillage on the high seas. What I had planned to rival ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ turned out to be a boring story about an old loser (it’s partly autobiographical) going boating with a mangy dog.

Oh, well. I place it hear on public record as a matter of tradition.

***

 

This tale is of adventure. One of sorrow and of glee.

A descent into a maelstrom upon the madness of the sea.

This tale is of a sailing ship that would never run aground

and two souls who sailed aboard her – the Captain and the Hound.

 

The Captain was a foolish man, a man of fragile will,

a man of lightweight confidence that far outweighed his skill.

Engendering derision with all who sailed with him,

he knew nought of navigation and had never learned to swim.

 

And yet he had ambition of expedition to new lands,

explorations of new nations, of setting foot on foreign sands,

of seeing sights unseen, of hearing words in foreign tongue,

and then returning home again to hear his praises sung.

 

So he called for volunteers “Allay your fears! I need a crew!

All are free to sail with me …. and nearly anyone will do…”

When just a dog walked up the gang plank, cocked it’s leg beside the mast,

the Captain thought to stop it, but then he let the mongrel past.

 

They headed East, both man and beast, the choice of heading was inspired

by an intuition guided mission where no compass was required.

They sailed without a map, knowing not where they were bound,

charting course direct to nowhere, and it was nowhere that they found.

 

The weather started worsening, and from then it never stopped.

The ship was but a thimble, upon an angry ocean dropped.

The waves rose up to twenty feet, the rain began to pour.

Great shards of hail ripped through the sail as the winds began to roar.

 

The Captain, he was terrified, as God released his ire.

Again, again, came sheets of rain and lightning bolts of fire.

The Hound remained, though, unperturbed, and lay sleeping on the deck,

Scratching now and then a flea, beneath the collar round it’s neck.

 

With no-one there to speak to, with none to lend an ear,

no lieutenant to support him, no loyal friend to quell his fear,

no solace in his Bible, no meaning to be found,

as last resort the Captain sought a counsel with the Hound.

 

“You dirty dog, you mangy mutt, have you anything to say?

Of how we came to be here? Of how we got this way?

Why is my heart now breakin’? Why has God forsaken me?

How, with faith so shaken, might I fulfill my destiny?”

 

The Hound looked at him thoughtfully, and gave a knowing bark,

then it offered words of wisdom and of comfort in the dark,

“You have fulfilled your destiny and arrived here, come what may.

Safe harbour still awaits you….. and that’s all I’ve got to say.”

 

The Hound returned to silence, and then the wind fell silent too,

the sun shone down upon them and thus the world began anew.

The seas were calm and welcoming, for the storm had truly passed.

Then the Captain caught a vision as he leant against the mast.

 

“Look, my boy! There’s land ahoy, and I can see it through the fog!

The sails deploy! Let’s jump for joy! Rejoice with me my faithful dog!”

The Hound, though, offered no response, and simply settled back to sleep,

drifting into nothingness where canine secrets it could keep.

 

Twas no harbour in the distance, least not one that you could see,

yet there the Captain found a refuge, where his spirit still roams free.

No animal can speak to men, and let’s not otherwise pretend,

but through heaven, hell and madness, the Hound was with him to the end.

***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may recall (though probably not) that, echoing a success rate I have documented for a few years now, I bombed out in round 1 of this year’s NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition. I had written what I thought was a half-reasonable historical fiction story about a charismatic religious zealot who is fire-bombed by the local police department resulting in half the neighbourhood going up in flames (an actual historical event). The judges considered my contribution carefully before choosing to award me zero points out of a possible 15, putting me in equal last place (familiar territory). This meant that competing in part 2 of the first round would be, competitively speaking, utterly pointless, so in a typically mature response I threw down my pen and refused to further cooperate.

I friend suggested that such a response was childish (I knew that) and since I’d paid the entry fee then I might as well put something in anyway. I eventually agreed to take part as long as I was not assigned ‘fairy tale’, for such would be beneath my high literary sensibilities.

I was assigned ‘fairy tale’.

But look …. my ‘high literary sensibilities’ are not that high, as it turns out. I ended up quickly churning a story out and submitting it. I thought it was fairly dreadful.

But here it is …. the full requirement was fairytale/teapot/swimming pool ….

***

Conversations With A Genie

Roberto of Persepolis, The Royal Genie of Mesopotamia, came into my life about a week after I acquired the teapot. I had purchased it at a second-hand market nearby and, one rainy Tuesday evening, I tried to brew tea in it.

I’ve been sitting by a swimming pool here on a South Pacific Island ever since.

“It’s an antique, you idiot,” roared the genie as he emerged from the spout, hurriedly brushing the steaming leaves of Darjeeling from his clothes, “you’re not supposed to make tea in it.”

 He was upset. I understand that now. But how was I to know? There’d been no mention of a resident genie when I bought it. “Sorry,” I said.

But he wouldn’t be placated. “I could have drowned in there. Never mind the third-degree burns.”

“The water was only tepid, at worst.”

“Dickhead.”

“Arsehole.”

Clearly, we’d got off to a bad start.

Right from the outset he looked wrong. He appeared in a puff of smoke (or was it steam?) wearing green board shorts, an orange tee-shirt, a red baseball cap and sunglasses. He stood about 5’9”. He smelled bad. “Have you got any beer?” he asked, “I’m parched.”

He’d emptied seven bottles, consumed three sandwiches, a bowl of fruit and a carton of ice-cream before he was willing to speak again. It was an unusual introduction, to say the least. “I’ve been locked up in there for almost half a century,” he offered, by way of explanation, pointing towards the teapot, “and you can’t even fart in that thing without risking self-asphyxiation,” whereupon he loudly demonstrated the noxious luxury of his recent freedom.

I was beginning to seriously doubt his qualifications. “Aren’t you supposed to be a giant wearing baggy silk pants and ostentatious earrings?”

“We try to be contemporary.”

“And why the teapot? Isn’t it supposed to be a lamp?”

“There’s a housing crisis.”

I asked him about the three wishes, of course. It was the obvious thing to do. “Is there any sort of specific protocol?” I enquired, “anything that’s off limits?”

“Is this going to be some weird sexual thing?”

“Probably not.”

“Then there’s no rules. Just the one disclaimer.”

“Which is?”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

 

I know now, having spent endless days by the pool with him, that The Royal Genie of Mesopotamia never gives a straight answer. When I had asked him for an assurance that my wishes would come true, he had been typically evasive.

“They wouldn’t be wishes then, would they? Because if you knew they were going to come true then they’d be pre-emptive statements of fact, not wishes. The very nature of a wish is hoping it will come true. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

“So, I just hope? Isn’t that what I’m always doing anyway? Where do you fit in? I don’t want the cake. I just want to eat it.”

The genie had looked up and grinned. He was missing several front teeth. “Was that a wish?”

I suddenly panicked. “The cake? No! It didn’t count as a wish, did it?”

“Can you feel the soft texture of sponge in your mouth? The sweet smoothness of cream on your lips? The taste of strawberries on your tongue?”

“No.”

“Then I guess you got away with it,” he gave me another horrible grin, “this time.”

 

I didn’t get away with it a second time.

 

And so, I feel particularly stupid, sitting here beside the pool, drinking endless margaritas, eating club sandwiches, and staring at unattainable, bikini clad beauties parading past day after day.

But when Bob (he’s insisted on everyone addressing him thus since our arrival) had casually asked me how I envisaged my life panning out, and I had told him that I hoped, one day, to live on an exotic island, by a pool, in the sun, with a special friend, for the rest of my life, I had meant it hypothetically.

But there’s no such thing as a hypothetical wish, as it turns out.

“You were very specific about it. Wish number one …. One day/The rest of your life. Wish number two … Swimming pool in the sun. Wish number three ….With a special friend,” he smirked, “and they don’t come much more special than me.”

“I said ‘hope’, not ‘wish’.”

“I think we’d agreed that the two terms were interchangeable.”

“I didn’t agree on anything,” I insisted.

A couple of girls swam by, and paused to smile sweetly at Bob. He had become very popular, poolside, and showed little interest in returning to life in a teapot. “Silly you,” he murmured.

It’s difficult to adequately convey how exasperating things can become spending day after day by a glorious sun-drenched swimming pool with an obnoxious escapee from a Brothers Grimm story, whose responses to even the simplest of questions turn into amateur philosophy lectures.

“So, there’ll be no happily ever after?”

“Happiness is defined by unhappiness. One cannot exist without the other. You were happy here for a while.”

“But isn’t it supposed to be just once upon a time? Not every fucking day?” My language was getting as bad as his.

“Even I can’t alter the basic nature of the universe. History repeats itself.”

“And there’s no more wishes? That’s it?”

In response to this question, he put down his beer and shrugged. “Who knows? I suppose you could try. You want to go for world peace this time?”

 I knew it was another of his traps, so I gestured towards a woman across the pool. “No,” I hissed at him , “I just wish I could see more of her, and less of you.”

He leaped up and called out loudly to her, “Hey, sweetheart! My buddy wants to see your tits!”

She glared at me with undisguised hostility before raising a middle finger and turning away.

Roberto of Persepolis, The Royal Genie of Mesopotamia, shook his head and grinned once more. “No mate,” he said, “it looks like you’re all out of wishes.”

***

And here’s the mystery.

The judges awarded me 11 points for it.

I just came upon this. It’s something that I must have written quite recently for somebody or for some reason, but I can’t remember anything about it. Such is the nature of a slowly advancing senility (I almost mistakenly wrote ‘salinity’ there – and I am, indeed, growing increasingly salty). I may have even posted it somewhere on here already – I just can’t remember.

So I’m not actually sure of what it’s supposed to be about, but I think it has something to do with the fruitless search for love when love is all around us and how we tend to not see the forest for the trees …. I think it has something to do with giving up on the search for perfection only to discover that perfection is to be found in imperfection, not only in others, but in ourselves. I think it might be about acceptance.

But I could be wrong, because, as I say, I can’t actually remember writing it.

**

Shake the tree to see what falls, on

Hands that through a forest crawls

Forever onward t’ward the light

Ever upward, birds in flight, might

Always be a sight to see, please

Forgive me of my vanity

Our wedding night we shall not sleep, on

Vows that we could never keep

 

And when the morning comes at last

When all our nights have been surpassed

We two loves might meet again

Meet in dreams of mornings when

At every moment, arms entwined

Any movement thus enshrined, in

Time, and in our memory

Again together. You and me.

**

A dreary morning, so I’m told
A mist of tears. A blowing cold
Dark cloud across a solemn sky
Another day is drifting by
Let me keep the curtains drawn
To shield us from another dawn
Let us hide here. Let us sleep
With memories that we will keep
Protected from the grasp of time
Where I might read our nursery rhyme
And watch you, always, as you doze
In silence share your sweet repose
And dreams of sunshine, until when
I hold your little hand again.