Neil Fulwood
The Collected Poems of Cody Jarrett 1.
They’re real short, see – just the few things I managed to jot down between hold-ups and shoot-outs. Short poems in stark lines – short like the space between the cosh and the skull, between the finger and the trigger, between the getaway car and the state line. And if any of you cheap bums says I’m ripping off The Hollow Men, you’ll be wearing your face backwards. 2. This is how I see it – a man’s what he is and if the law don’t allow for that, things heat up. But what a man is to his Ma, when it ain’t about guns or money or liquor, that’s different. So I tried to put it down pretty, use the words like they were flowers not spent cartridges. I tried, Ma. 3. The best of ’em died young or just quit writin’. Rimbaud gave up everything he had, done with poetry at twenty and ready to take on the world: soldier, traveller, man of business. 4. You get to thinking about legacy and reputation, what they’ll say as they lower the box. You get to thinking about what you did, how it was shaped by where you came from and the folks you knew. You get to thinking about what matters, whether you made it to the top of the world or whether the world blew up in your face. Morpheus in the UnderworldThe further down the nine circles,
the louder it gets. Not from screams or the yelped repentances of death-shocked sinners – that’s just so much propaganda. No, the noise is from the all-night, all-eternity partying. Eighties big-hair soft-rock; empty kegs jettisoned into the fires that keep the whole placed stoked and the saunas and jacuzzis hot. There’s a whole new circle awaiting its grand opening: the Hugh Hefner Memorial VIP Lounge. But chances are he’ll live forever. Meanwhile, joints are toked and fat lines like barcodes in white are hoovered up from the mirror while despots and party girls conga down endless corridors. You’d have a hard time believing this is Hell. Until the relentlessness wears you out and you try to find a room devoid of orgies or shady deals. Until you try to catch some sleep. Hammer on the walls all you like; no-one has work tomorrow, in fact the only work anyone does is the nails-on-chalkboard business of your sleep deprivation. This is Hell, remember: it’s different for everyone, and all you want is some quiet time, all you want is a few hours’ kip. Last of the Famous International NobodiesAt the office, he cuts his opinions loose
and sends them scuttling between desks and filing cabinets. Before he goes home, he retrieves them from the bins, dusts them off, locks them in a drawer, safe and sound and ready for tomorrow. God forbid he’d have nothing to bore his colleagues with; God forbid he’d go home and feed those endless evening hours into the grinder of allotment and DIY and not rely on it being within his power to have a voice again at work. The sky self-harms: bleeds sunset. He’s still awake, trying to place that quote about the bars two men stare out of (Wilde? Byron? Blake?): one of ’em sees mud and one sees stars. Surely some mistake? Surely it’s not that clear cut? How about this: one man looks through the window of a studio flat and turns away, denies the reflection’s him. |
ResignationIt’s all been done before, from invitations
to insert the now-vacated job role in a place of total eclipse to the straightforward "[insert expletive] you, I quit." It’s been done as spittle-flecked close-ups in movies and to steel guitar accompaniment in country songs. It’s been done by dockers and welders and office monkeys. It’s been done triumphantly and bitterly and ended in fist fights. It’s been done by the disaffected sheriff, handing in his badge and gun; by the typesetter eager for words of his own and convinced they’ll hammer themselves out in a welter of travel, alcohol and sexual misadventure and all he has to do is chuck it, turn his back on it, walk away from it all. A Quiet Place to StayPeacocks stake a claim to the lawn.
The guy tending the bar has named them. Time is something he seems to have on his hands, in his pockets, generally about his person. Invisible units of time clipped to his belt, a time fetish on his key-ring like a rabbit's foot. Time as a book mark, keeping his place in 'À la recherché du temps perdu', his third reading of the entire sequence. Time as the pages in his diary, discursive entries on the habits of peacocks, the interchangeability of guests, the slow passing of the hours. The Inspiration ThiefI have been cleaned out:
that observation I made on the bus this morning and filed for later use – gone; those words overheard in the staff canteen that wanted to be an extended piece for two voices – gone; the quirky concept that threaded itself through the gunmetal smoking-break tendrils like a mantra – gone; the idly conjured fragments dancing like Disney elephants around the office, blowing kisses – gone. No prints, no traces; just a ghost’s shadow on CCTV: a thief turned blacksmith, my words shaped as his. The Prince of TorremolinosMoney has put him where he is now,
a man of business in a tourist trap. Money took him through Fuengirola and Benalmádena, an expatriate carving a niche. Greased palms, slick talk, bodies oiled and bronzing lined up along the beaches like hot dogs waiting to be turned on the grill, pockets waiting to be turned out in the bars. A loan here, a favour there, a signature on the dotted line. His name assumes a currency. Bulstrode. Bull. John Bull. Deals done cash in hand, off the books and auditless. Some local muscle to back him up, a reputation ambivalent enough to make a tough guy hesitate, but not scare investors off. Money accrued. Money rubbing up against itself, non-consecutively. Money dancing its rude tango. A couple of bars, a casino, interests in a hotel complex. Money brought him here, made him what he is now – the prince of Torremolinos. Bulstrode. Bull. British bulldog. Twisted as a pound sign, in thrall to the value of the Euro, he curses the nubile acres of the beach if his day-old copy of the Daily Mail costs him more than it did last week. He turns his back on the tanned ranks of girls languorously arranged as if auditioning for reality TV, turns his back on the lads strutting their pimply delusions. They’re nothing till evening fetches them in, nothing till their lusts and wallets are his. Bulstrode. Bull. Businessman. Platform ZeroThis is not Adlestrop. No birds singing
and whether the dull parallel of the rails ends up in Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire is anyone’s guess. It’s dark and I can’t see the end of the platform. It rained earlier. The service was delayed shortly after the view stopped being worth the gift of sight. Two hours between a sewage treatment plant and a haulage yard and it wasn’t even like the trucks were those big gleaming rigs you’d imagine hauling dangerous loads across Alaska. Now I’m here, standing on platform zero and it’s either the railway equivalent of Bruckner’s 'die Nullte' or my second-class Twilight Zone ticket has brought me to the start of a journey I never took. Either way, the café’s closed. |