MASTORNAVINE, WATCHING THE LAMP

Soren - Watching the lamp won't suffer the bulb, you may as well wait for the switch - It comes hairless, forgets your name - Comes uninvited, laden with gifts - Removes borrowed stockings with a toothbrush - And examines cuticles under seaside strobes - Making amends with cuts and cold coffee sandwiches - While ordering in overdrive entrees with grapefruit juice - Eyes full of lightbulbs, it clicks on the band aid covered heater - Winding up as a timepiece telling fairytales with bad jokes every nineteen hours - In lines watching lamps on lent only legal pads - In a building left standing on a favourite Beirut street.

MASTORNAVINE, YOU CAN CONTACT ME

Soren - You can contact me at the next hotel when I reach another half century - Meanwhile keep gallivanting, and decline all offers to preside over any board of directors, for it would only make you crabby - Keep rotating too those trusty snow chains of yours, all the while maintaining a safe distance from the latest flickering shiny news - By noon yesterday, we found ourselves surrounded by workers’ struggles, eventually derailing in front of a Buenos Aires apartment block - Green uniforms rifled through the science of our injuries, shuffled through the different doors of our correspondence, and kept insisting on pushing through their own version of events they found gathering dust in the archives - Much depended now on the queen in the bed folded up in the best looking blanket, who would be, indisputably, leaving in the morning - Back out on the street again, I suddenly liked the look of every surrounding word burst - Behind a bombshell, a rack of Russian - And of the world’s hurt, I try not to think twice, until that instant when, without warning, a most notorious rifle shoots Roger - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, LATELY SO USED TO SOLITUDE

Soren - Lately so used to solitude sudden company seems strikingly peculiar - Occasionally so much so I need to determine whether the woman lying beside me is part of some elaborate dream - On her suggestion I rub some blood from the cut on my finger into her milk cloudy nipples - Back outside the hotel, heavenly lost in the laneways - Market stalls piled high with dry beans - Salamis in all shapes and sizes - Festooned ranks of cheeses - Early evening corn on the cob steamed in seaweed with lobsters and clams - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, DO YOU REMEMBER

Soren - Do you remember Seasons All November Fire? - Down on the wire, sharing seats with chickens, crossed blackened feet, bales of hay, and wailing toothless peasant women - Clutching their tickets and loudly lamenting their rapidly rootless state - In the mirror the scars resemble maps never before encountered - Leading the curious into corners never before seen - Drawing all desire through the apparition of perpetual doubt - Where everything is always at its beginning and nothing ever comes to an end - Then there's the latest picture postcard that takes turns fanning the brow - As the world awaits the four horsemen and whatever clowns are still hooked to such obsolete harnesses - Further from the owl and the ghost of a cowardly cactus - Still stranded under a yellow moonlit window of memory - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, AS THE STRAPS CUT TIGHTER

Soren – As the straps cut tighter into my arms, eventually I shall start crying –Not tears of pain or sorrow though – But rather laughter – A constant formidable flow shall pour down my face – Help carve out deeper and deeper lines into my features – The floor before long growing more and more slippery beneath what were once the steadiest of feet – While the keeper of the wolves walks steadily behind – Never lagging or needing to run – I’ll catch sight of him occasionally – Coming round a corner in the distance or appearing out of a wood I have only just left – No more than a glance though will I ever get of him – For it is never too long before registering his presence that I turn and start running again – And for years now these wolves have been on the chase – Before they finally catch up – And dive right in – But far from causing me any harm, their bites give me strength – My skin strangely welcoming their latest range of scars – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, IF I AM A CLOCK

Soren – If I am a clock there is a woman sitting in the sand at nine – Crosslegged – Her long blonde hair hanging straight down her back – Perfect posture – A small dog running around her, yelping at the surf – Nearby, a young girl frolics in the water – Kicking the froth around her ankles – Nobody else is around – And now the dog is in the woman’s arms – And the girl stands motionless knee deep in the broken waves – And I must shut my eyes – The now screaming ocean almost too much to bear – Then later, eyes open again, I see the woman still there – Now standing – Now walking toward the dog – And she picks up a piece of driftwood and throws it down the beach – Here comes the girl – They are getting ready to leave – I no longer know what time they are at – And again I have to shut my eyes – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, TENNIS TODAY

Soren – Tennis today down by the river – On the clay court – At one point watching my desperate attempt to reach one of those sly drop shots of hers – Inevitably leading to my falling first through then over the net – The momentum keeping me rolling and making me wonder whether I’ll reach as far as her feet – And she just can’t stifle her laughter any longer – Until finally I come to a stop, somewhat bewildered, and look up at her perspiring face – She says she’s thirsty, but all her water’s gone – I point over back behind my baseline to a near full bottle waiting in the shade – She passes by the net as I slowly get to my feet – I can see she’s watching me out the corner of her eye – As I brush the clay away from my thighs, knees, calves, backside –Tighten my shoelaces – Then go and sit down beside her and watch her gulp gulp gulp gulp down the water - And I bend down and kiss the inside of her thigh where the hem of the pleated white skirt meets her tanned skin – Listen, she says, I can’t think of anything right now I’d rather have in my mouth than water – Later tonight though, she says, when we’re out watching the stars and the rising moon, maybe we could sip some whiskey and make the most of this free time before being summoned back into the fold – And then, she says, before you know it, we’ll be tanned and taut with tickets in our hands and plans plans plans – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, AN ENORMOUS FOG

Soren – An enormous fog completely encompasses a hatred for the outside – As beautiful as anything can be to shatter the calm, though surely there can be no more for us – Who would like to see his seclusion of years? – Thinking at some point in space, a place: others of him – And somewhere within the million miles away, a flash – Light, they say, now carries her – The presence known across the momentary state of death, where light and dark are equal – All the while detesting those who land - Weeping tears falling from ten thousand stony eyes – And she fails to understand that it might be her only chance – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, BORED BUT STABLE

Soren – Bored but stable Anthoniszoon van Aken first counts up the remaining fingers of hope and then subtracts that figure from the complete comedy of distress caused by the lack of a properly sufficient emotional response – Next dividing the resulting nuisance with the number of visions of Ana left to him – Leaving a remainder just within reach – Held timidly in the space between and just above the eyes – Mora

COMMENTARIES, 8

We couldn't get on to the tracks to help. They had to keep us back. That’s okay, I understand. Seems like the whole town was down there that day. Some never managed to get properly back up again. They’re still down there in a way, mourning the mangled. At the memorial service, Father Justin said he had never seen so many injured before. So many maimed. So much destruction. So many dead. He cupped my elbow and wanted us to pray for peace. I almost joined him, out of habit. But this was something else, this was something else entirely. Any solace I might find could only fill a tea cup. That stuff’s not for me anymore, if it ever was. This kind of belief is usually passed on like supporting a particular football team, isn’t it? I’m sure even Father Justin would know that about me now. Not that we’ve talked too much about such stuff. He’s tried a few times but left it at that. He’s an old family friend. He values more highly the lofty climes of love than my sorry ass on a pew. We have an understanding. After what happened, they offered me counseling. I don’t know if they offered Father Justin any. The church probably have their own people who see to that. Justin saw people with their arms hanging off too. He saw the blood, he saw the pouring blood too.

COMMENTARIES, 7

They asked me to tell them anything I saw, anything to do with the man they think was seen around and about. Hair colour, they asked about hair colour. Different kinds of clothes. It sounded on occasion like they were trying to catch me out. But I understand. I doubt I was any help. It wasn’t long after breakfast. I was still trying to wake up. But I do remember seeing a man, a man who stood out to me. He was wearing a woolen hat, that I do remember, it was covering his ears, and I remember because my ears were freezing at the time. I remember because I was cursing myself for leaving the house insufficiently prepared. But I couldn’t stay in any longer, she was going to make me burst. I couldn’t even get down my bacon, she kept going on about the state of the nation, the kind of direction we were heading in, and how come Carl across the street could find some work and I couldn’t. I’ll tell you why, like I didn’t tell her. It’s because of where he puts his nose, that’s Carl in a cup for you, and where he also places other parts of his person, when he thinks no one’s looking, when he thinks no one knows. But a lot of us know, it’s not news anymore. Some women out there value his sort, that’s all, while the others of us on this side of the street are waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

ANOTHER YELLOW INSERT

Putting all the poison high on the shelf, I then knocked down the shelf, and used what I could for firewood. That night, the flames were impressive. You could have cooked a cow, a whole cow, if you were that way inclined. But no, nobody was invited over. Now it was time to get going. Leave Katoomba. My leads were leading nowhere. So I stayed long enough to picture the flames rapidly rising to the rafters, grabbed my bag, and headed to the station, a little after dawn. A train was due to roll in anytime soon. Here and there you could barely count your fingers through the thick mist. The platform was empty except for a couple who would appear every now and then and approach the edge, peering either way down the grey yellow tracks in search of the bright one eyed train, which according to their timetable should have pulled in by now. Otherwise they stayed cooped in the waiting room and compared climbing gear. Nearby, braving the weather on a bench, sat an old man wearing a long white beard, which narrowed toward the centre of his chest and was shaped like an arrow aiming at his heart. His head was covered with what resembled a tea cosy, atop a frame of admirable posture, and not just for a man of his age. If he stood up beside you, you'd straighten your spine in a second, lengthen your neck and tuck in your chin, otherwise what remained of your testicles might tighten even further, shoot up your trunk and permanently station themselves behind your chilled nipples. Then came the announcement through a cone from the station master, followed by a face to face debriefing, informing those waiting that the train would not be coming as expected. There was a delay further back on the tracks. Reports were coming through of an accident, some said incident, but for the moment there was nothing specific. Everything was mere speculation. Opinions spread like a house on fire. Soon the platform was crowded with commuters. The sun was sleeping in and the mist in turn was making the most of the sun's sluggish mood. Then I saw him, there in the crowd, waiting with the rest of them. Even if the light were even less than it looked, I still would have recognized him, no matter how many steps away. It was Ava, undoubtedly. He was suddenly a stray amongst a sleepy snake of commuters now about to go down the ramp and around the bend upon being informed that the train would not be coming and that some buses were on their way instead. Ava. He was here after all. And so it looked like I would be staying, staying after all, when I was oh so ready to leave. It's easy now in hindsight to say I was silly to assume that he would turn left at the bottom of the ramp and wait with the others for the buses, but I was, I was silly, I was plain stupid to take my eyes off him for even a second, so that by the time I changed course and ran back down the tunnel and over toward the south side of town, he was nowhere to be seen. After a cup of coffee, I booked a bed in a hostel for a few nights until I could find something more permanent. Then I called Susie to say I loved her and that I wouldn't be coming home after all, and went back to work on the translations.