A life floated downstream

The remains of my life floated quickly away down the river in a suitcase, sent off to sea.

My body should have been with it.  Instead, I returned home without the possessions I had chosen to die with.


At that time home was a home between homes, a room lined with boxes hastily filled and sealed with tape. As I did so, I planned my own demise, filtering out the items I intended to take.

The room was in an otherwise empty and secluded block of tiny flats; one of many in one of the many abandoned parts of the city.  I wasn’t meant to be there so, on my return, I set fire to the boxes and began my return to your arms.


I broke into a car like I used to back when it first happened, but unlike then, I drove slowly and carefully away from the burning buildings and into the inhabited zone.  Along the streets that used to throng with people, buildings that used to be so bright, and tried to remember the sounds we would hear there.


Upon arrival at our home I sat outside staring at the steering wheel, the radio on, tuned into static, to try and get my head right.  Eventually I managed it and I left the car, walked up the garden path, opened the door, paused; climbed the stairs, turned the corner, walked past the bathroom and the spare room and paused again, for a long time, before entering our room to find you exactly where I had left you.

I laid down next to you and placed your arms around me, holding my breath against the stench, for you were not as I had left you, and closed my eyes, again remembering the sounds of before, hearing your voice tell me what I should have done.


I carried you out to the street and stole a fresh car, one with enough petrol still in the tank, and carefully placed you in the backseat.  Together we drove, this time listening to Amnesiac, though only in my mind, back to our bridge.  I spoke to you one last time, told you what I needed to tell you, before placing you onto a boat.  Finally, I pushed you away and watched as you floated calmly away.


Maybe I should have joined you, maybe our bodies should have floated down the muddy river together, but I didn’t just back out of my own suicide to do the right thing by you.  

As far as I know, I am the last human alive; 

but what if I am not?  

That thought, that single thought, flickers dimly in the back of my mind and keeps me alive.


Having cried once more for you, I left the riverbank and went back to the car.  I knew that our inhabited zone was empty so I picked up our old A-Z, still full of the markings we had made when we first made this plan and began to drive to the next nearest inhabited zone.  

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt, which is in the Public Domain:

Post Freedom Apocalypse

“we’re not scaremongering,
this is really happening”

So many warned us,
Predicted the next step,
Pointed to this existence.
Yet we all ignored them,
Called them names, paranoid.
Carried on with blinkers up,
All down our own little tunnels
Fixed only on our lives,
Each little insignificant one.
Obsessed with our little selves,
Not seeing the big picture,
The group growing in power,
Slowly taking our liberties
And freedoms, all we held dear.
Even when we did take note,
We believed their lies and
Gave them our cross.
They rubbed their hands
Together and carried it
To our execution place.
Easy to see it now, how
They wormed up from beneath
And started all of this.
Dominated us before looking
To move to the world level.
Hindsight makes it painfully
Clear how it all happened.
And now we are slaves,
Prisoners of our own stupidity.
Blindfolded we sailed into
This Alcatraz in a sea of tar:
Inescapable, untraceable.
To try is to disappear,
Dragged down into their lair.

“while you make pretty speeches”

Thousands die in the wars you wage
And cover under the lies you spin.
Thousands more die from debt and hunger,
Caused in the lands you rape
With your missiles, bullets and shells,
Lose their homes because you
Drove your tanks through them
Or because you’ve scorched their
Earth to build a new metropolis,
Get cut to shreds because of your
Imperialistic and apocalyptic policies,
Flee in fear, further from you,
To places you haven’t grasped
In your twisted fingers,
Haven’t extended your arm to.
Yet.
But we don’t know this, do we?
The illegal papers lie, don’t they?
Motives, plans, facts are above us,
What our government does cannot
Concern us, we’re just your drones,
Bleeding to oil the machine
You cart about the world doing
Your dirty work; conquering,
Killing, enslaving-no-sorry:
“Liberating,” I’m sure that should be.
And throughout you just hide
In your buildings, behind
Everything you throw at us.
Real big men, aren’t you?
So powerful yet so scared
Of us downtrodden little people.
Despite all your indoctrination,
Propaganda et al it’s
Still necessary to produce more.
And our streets and rivers here
Run with the blood of those you
Cut down for petty crimes,
For standing up or running away.
Cut down and cut up, gone.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Kill enough and you’ll kill ‘em all?
The sticky streets suggest otherwise.
As long as we breed, we’ll keep on.

“i’m sure i used to be so free”

A childhood innocence lost
Almost in the flash of an a-bomb.
I used to run in my garden,
Kicking a ball aimlesly for hours,
Being the people in my head.
Now I don’t know such a game,
I only know their ways.
So much slid away
The day they took our liberties.
So that now I see the sadness
In my children’s eyes when
Their laughter is frowned upon
And the police tell them to
Go inside and watch TV.
Everything I once did frowned upon.
Leisure time lost to loyalty
And the new official pastimes-
Listening to them,
Doing what they say.
Yet they claim we’re ‘free’ now.
Free to walk the streets mabe,
To breed, give them more fuel.
But not to think freely,
Educate ourselves, have fuel
Of our own to help us grow.
Not sure i’m supposed
To know all of this.
Soon it will be forgotten,
With the next generation will
Come complete indotrination
And eradication of the free past.
My memory cannot save us now.

“we’ve got heads on sticks”

Kept from centre,
From knowledge, luxury.
Stopped from complaining.
Beaten down long ago,
Best things taken away.
Get what we are given.
Made to feel we have everything,
When nothing is what we have.
Make what we can of it,
Like some pseudo-disaster.
But then we don’t have the knowledge,
Given the education we don’t haven’t got.
Not like them-
They can do anything,
Have anything they want.
Not like us in the dark,
Hammering our hands.
No time to expand.
All work and no play.
Time devoted to them
And our family’s enlightenment.
Never to expand ourselves,
Like we’re always children,
Innocent and oblivious.
And when we get their toys
We can’t use them anyway,
The knowledge just isn’t there,
We don’t have the know-how.
So until liberation,
They’ll move their wheels
And we’ll wonder how.

“they rally round the family”

One institution left intact and
They promote it to no end.
They let us have sex, have families
And they love to remind us.
See it as the only normality,
All anyone would ever want,
It’s the cover for everything.
Try to keep us going,
By keeping us back,
Putting us in our little houses
With wives and children.
Keep the dating game going
With pubs and clubs.
Give us social lives
And family lives,
Tell us it’s enough,
All that we need,
Our point in life,
Why we are here
(Why they let us live).
Cinema reflects this,
All films contain good
Wholesome, happy families,
Where the kids dearly
Love their mother and father,
Who seem to earn thousands
And live in a large house
No matter what their occupation.
Singletons are upstarts,
People who question this life:
Destined for arrest for
Crimes against the state.
All just propaganda
Too often overlooked.
Enough for some, though.
Not for me.
Want to vote again,
See my sons grow
To have a world,
Almost any world,
But this one.
I too care for the family,
My family- in a better way,
Not a fake smiley celluloid way,
But a true paternal way.
Want them to be wild flowers,
Not potted on the shelf.

“I’ll fight to the death ‘til
they give me back my life”

I was a teacher until
They got into office.
I was a bloody good one
Until I got retrained
To build bombs- sorry,
I mean work in a factory
Of unspecified produce.
Now just walk the
Streets dreaming of the
Old days with a line
From an old song buzzing
Wildly in my head,
Telling me what I should
Do, should be doing.
The right feelings, thoughts
Hidden away in grey matter.
Need to be dug out
And put into practice,
Join a movement,
Fight to the death,
So I can live my own
Life, not the one
Handed out in a queue.

“at least i’m fucking trying”
“the system that cares about only one culture”

Everyone asks me why.
I hand them a leaflet,
Quote them socialist peoples:
Marx, Trotsky,
Certain textbooks,
Historical eras.
They point at the police
On every street corner,
Tell me my skull’ll get cracked
On the rails of the bridge.
I say it’s just one way to die.
I could not be involved
And still be executed
In some random killing.
They tell me it’s pointless,
Quietly suggest I stop
Or I’ll receive a knock
At the door, for sure.
I suggest otherwise.
No one got anywhere
Without trying bloody hard.
That’s how they got in,
That’s how we’ll
Drive themn out.
Underground we may be,
But a wedge we’re forming
To drive in their heart.
Then they scoff, laugh,
Tell me I’m insane.
At least I’m doing something,
Better than nothing.
Just hoping they’ll leave,
Quietly letting us get on
With it, is stupid apathy.
They may as well be the
Police chopping us down.
They say it’s just class struggle,
An age old problem
Always pointlessly fought.
No one ever likes the
Government in power,
It’s just a constant thing
That gets nowhere and
Won’t ever disappear.
I look with a blank face
At fellow members of a
Struggling class, powerless,
And, seemingly, castrated.
In disbelief I’m disgusted
At the indifference before me.
I want to crack the bottles
They hold over their heads.
How can they grumble
(And that they do)
Yet say things like that.
How can they reminisce
And then just stand back?
I ask them if they remember
When they could phone anywhere
On earth, surf the net.
Travel abroad on holiday,
Rather than the holiday camps.
When there was an outside
World and not just a
Dilapidated Britain
Cold and all alone.
When we had a future,
Through education could
Actually do something
With our lives. Aspire,
Not just be trained for
The job allocated to you.
When the government
At least pretended to care,
And passed acts for us.
They mutter something about
Liking the camps- good
Clean, wholesome family fun,
About liking what they have.
That they do care,
And about protecting their
Families, not wanting to die
For a “worthless” cause.
And so we fight 2-pronged:
Fighting to overthrow, survive
All talk and to convert.
Once there’s enough,
Then we’ll really fight and
Can “raise the red flag triumphantly
For Communism and for liberty.”
Because there is saying something,
And then there is doing something.
One may be easier but
The other ahs a result.
I’d rather have a result
Than sit around and chat.

“our bodies floating down a muddy river”

Everything has its cost,
I fear this could be dear.
I don’t think they have our
Thoughts yet but their betrayal
Might notb be worth contemplating.
So many just vanish
And that shit-filled river would make
A perfect waste-disposal chute
And the blood on the bridge and its
Rails make the rumours more chilling.
My fear is floating away with you,
Literally taking you down with me,
Ruining you with my ideology.
I walked you into this,
You have a mind of your own, I know,
But you were naive and innocent before,
A creation of their “education.”
Now freed, your own being.
Joined in the arms of our comrades.
And me.
If we were caught
It would be together,
And I can’t bear to even think of
Them beating you for information,
Or seeing the blood flow,
Grotesquely reddening your face,
Depersonalising you.
Their resistance is necessary and vital,
We need to bring them down.
But so are we.
Part of keeping us sane.
When it’s us alone
It doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
Just us in a room
Doing what matters.
We can hide forever
In a candlelit room
With just the sustenance we provide,
Worship as it should be performed.
To see your frail body
Fall limp in those waters
And beaten about and abused
Would as good as kill me.
I’d rather be tortured for years
Than to have you drink
Those waters, even in death.
You shouldn’t be discarded
For maggots and birds,
Not rolled in earth’s diurnal course-
Yet still with rocks and stones and trees,
Free to fly with the wind,
Across the earth and sea,
Entwined with the leaves and
Branches, then mocking them:
Not being sucked dry by their roots.
Win in death, if not now.
That’s how it should be,
Not dumped in some cesspit of a river.
So even if scattered apart,
We can find each other again.

“teach us to… lie and cover up”

Always a dream
To serve this land.
Keep law and order.
Wear that uniform.
Walk tall and proud.
So in sorting I did
All the right things:
Sports, cadets, got
Involved, played the
System and eventually
Won, got my name on the list.
Such a proud day.
Then I didn’t know what
I would come to see and do.
Not prepared then for death,
Never saw that side of it.
Would have made me sick then.
Education and training
Showed us the way,
How what we do helps.
Why spilling is necessary,
Just and correct
To protect ourselves
And the greater good.
They are the natural rulers
Of this country and
Democratically gained their
Right to live this way.
We help to show this
By punishing anyone
Who thinks otherwise,
Who undermines this utopia.
Strange how quickly you
Get used to cracking skulls.
You’d have thought it would
Be difficult but then they
Make you do four on your first
Day and it’s a piece of cake.
Like sex for the first time,
We lose all innocence
And start to climb to
A higher plain, a plateau
For the natural overlords.
We’re the elite of the
Non-ruling class, the
Ruling part, if you will.
Made special by marking,
Guarding the slopes, keeping
Them off and down in the
Filthy towns we’ve been
Lucky to graduate from.
Here to keep up smooth running,
To stamp down on anything
Sticking up and cover it up.
Make it seem like there
Was nothing at all.
Ever.
They complain that we
Can’t have power,
It’s all been taken away.
So then what’s this
We have if not power?
We’re normal people
Off the street and
We have the power
Of life and death.
I don’t think we go far enough.
We certainly have fear as a
Very important weapon,
But if they could
See and smell the pyres,
See us make examples
Through the flow of blood
From temples, noses and mouths
And the cracking of bones,
Know there are those who
Disappear even to us.
Sadly, though, it’s all a secret.
Behind closed doors.
For us a kind of sport,
Almost a return to fox
Hunting, a new blood sport.
One that helps society
Rather than a form of escape.
It is a part of life now.
Hunting, capturing,
Killing, disposing.
Pity they don’t see.
Shame.
Still, they know best.
Otherwise we wouldn’t be here
In this glorious utopia.

“this is what you get
when you mess with us”

Death.
What more or less
Would you expect for
Messing with absolute rulers.
Don’t complain.
You voted us in,
All this was clear
In the manifesto.
Wreck our karma
And we wreck you,
Fuck you up good
On the torture table
If we need to.
Then crack your skull,
Throw you away,
Pack you off.
Just let us get on with it,
Ruling you, this place.
Just go to your job
And you can live in peace.

“the future is what we believe in”

Right now we have nothing.
Reduced to rubble,
Flattened to shadows
Of our former persons.
The past has been taken
And destroyed in their furnace,
Moulded into the present.
The future is all we have
To believe in. And we do.
Not particularly religious
But our visions of the furure
Are so bleak and like
The present that we almost
Believe that one day one man
Will come and lead us to a
Glorious revolution and then
Lead us through government,
To a new era and future.
We have this hope, however dumb.
One day it will happen.
We believe in the future
And dream toward one,
All we need is the key,
The code, the man with the plan.
And then we’ll be there.
More a necessity thing,
To keep us sane,
Able to live this life
After hearing what the
Past was like.
So we can feel like we
Are letting this happen
Because we know it will end,
Because we know someone’s
Coming to sort it all out
And set us free like some
Twenty-first century Moses.

“no future”

We all say the same thing,
We tell our children how it
Used to be when we were young.
We talk of rebellion, liberation,
Yet we do nothing-
Even the underground resistance
Is largely based on theory.
In their eyes it may be,
But it’s nowhere else.
Quite simply, we have
No future, no real hope,
We are all as hollow as
Blown eggs, and just as fragile.
We succumb because
There is no choice
And constantly dream
Of something else.
We’re just stuck fast, really.
Like someone poured in the cement
Up to our ankles and it set fast.
Led into the trap and caught.
Like I said, we all say the same,
Just different ways, metaphors.
Animals now, a sub-class
Of humans with a set of bleatings.
Only alive to work and breed,
Stuck in an evolutionary groove,
Going round and round,
With no middle, no future.

Dates for whole of Post Freedom Apocalypse: 13, 15-20, 22-30/11; 1-3, 5, 7-9, 11-14, 16-21, 27/12/2001 and 2,4,5/1/2002.

250 Words: I may be paranoid but not an android

Set programming is all that this is.
A way my brain is fixed to respond.
I have tried to remove and erase, to reprogram.
I have tried to embrace positivity
But I am hemmed into this myopia like a rat in a cage.

I suck on cigarettes through the day.
Short breaths caused by fear clutching and squeezing,
depressing my lungs.
Knowledge that is always certain,
set in stone,
floods my mind and feeds it,
lets my thought flowers grow,
grow too much like those “damn extended metaphors” and take over control of me.

Set programming.
Nothing I can do these days.

I am not an android, though.
This is not all that I am.

I am not a computer running code and following commands.  I am a human being of flesh and blood: this is nature in one of its human forms and allows me my better days free from that cigarette fug and nicotine-fuelled rushes.  Relaxed days, breathing nicely and thinking clearly, more rationally, allowing me the space and time to discover the possibilities and weigh them up against one another.  No jumping, no overlord those days.

And days of blissful nothingness, silence, without the need for either scenario described above. Days of rest; effective Sundays when my need to explain one way or another hides away and lets me be, to feel normal and free-willed. 

No panic,
no pain,
only peace. 
The human feelings of others.

Because
I may be paranoid
but I am not an android.

---

Note: I wrote this (and the one before) after NME.COM pronounced Radiohead's Paranoid Android as their Best Song of the Last 15 Years.  I'm pretty sure it was this countdown and that in the magazine version of the article they mentioned the line of the song spoken by a Mac computer, "I may be paranoid but not an android."  I had always thought the line was "Repriortise a paranoid android," inspired by this discovery, wrote a story springing from each line.

This one also uses a quote from the Los Campesinos! song My Year in Lists.

250 Words: Reprioritise a paranoid android

He was driving us all completely mad in the lab, though he was never switched on for very long at a time.  We were spending most of our time trying to reprogram, re-wire, update, alter everything in order to locate and remove this negativity that came from him- sorry, it, he is an it (parental feelings are hard to shift) each time we switched it on.  

It was bringing us all down.  I’m talking about years of work to produce something that seemed to be naturally faulty.  An emotionless thought machine that was meant to be useful to all but instead thought we were all out to get it.

None of us could see the point of it, of any of it, if all our efforts were futile thanks to an apparent ghost in the machine causing lines of code to bring themselves into existence and create a personal philosophy based around a distrust of humans.

It was Steve that suggested it.  We just needed to reprioritise this paranoid android.  So simple!  Give it a need, or at least the ability, to protect the nation and maybe we could get Defence to take it off our hands and let us get back to normal computers.

Now it sits in a bunker scared witless of our neighbours while running through every possible attack scenario and working out ways to defend us.  Creating and saving endless defence plans, flagging up problems and giving us solutions.

Well, scratch the us.  It.  Always it.

---

Note: I wrote this (and the next one) after NME.COM pronounced Radiohead's Paranoid Android as their Best Song of the Last 15 Years.  I'm pretty sure it was this countdown and that in the magazine version of the article they mentioned the line of the song spoken by a Mac computer, "I may be paranoid but not an android."  I had always thought the line was "Repriortise a paranoid android," inspired by this discovery, wrote a story springing from each line.

Lairs, cells and memories

Comfortable as a rug or a blanket, lined in fur to lean against, or on, and snuggle; or
run your fingers through like a lover’s hair or a shaggy dog. A perfect spiral or circle
held in your hand- an arch, your hand underneath feeling skin. All kisses.

A space to dream in, to stare and see, not what is in front of you but pictures
imagined or remembered. Coloured spheres storing everything to snatch from the air
and view.

:A cottage near the beach, a walk through the hills or lakes- a swim in cool waters,
the first bite of a crisp apple, cries of joy.

:A warren, a set, a nest.

:Her room, his room, their bed. A car, a park-

slides,

swings,

roundabouts.

Cold and impenetrable, high above cliffs: a fortress, a castle foreboding, unfeeling,
unobtainable, visible, untouchable. There but not there, a mirage- a museum
of yourself locked in cases or fenced off behind doors. Locked doors, traps set.
Pictures on bubbles that will erase with the burst. Discomfort, entrapment, tears,
pain, fear. Alive but dead. Imagined. Ink or graphite on a page, pixels on a screen.
Lying still not daring to move because of War of the Worlds. Scared within a duvet,
gasping for breath. Laid bare: people laughing. Waiting forever. Never trying. Self-
imposed. Scratching.

Vital. Every one.
All and both.

Every inch,
Every cell, fibre.

“They got a skin and they put me in it”

“I need my memories. They are my documents.”

“They got a skin and they put me in it”

“I need my memories. They are my documents.”