I  had a John Bull Printing set.
You remember them don’t You?
Wooden hand held holder,
Individual slot in rubber letters.
Ink pad and paper.
Caxton would have killed for one.

Trouble was, the only words I could spell were Cat and Dog,
So I printed gibberish and told everybody it was a secret code.
Everybody said how clever and inventive I was.
Inspired. I added the word Mississippi tooo my list

Rats have eaten through a vital cable in the cellar

images have been consumed

I have called in the ' maker of crows beaks'

Northwich 1965

Janis Parker poured Grave Water over my head,
on the way to the station.
A jam jar full of stagnant flower water.
A misty slime tinged mucus,
that stank something chronic.
I can’t remember,
all these years on,
what I did to provoke this foul Baptism,
but it must have been something really bad.
Janis laughed her knickers off all the way to Knutsford

The Broken Nove l Ian Miller © 2008 allrights reserved

No shadow to snag the wire,

or feathers to fan the storm.

Just a hearing aid in my left ear

and that is not even beginning to tell.

No shadow or shade

on the Shoreham Wall,

nor a dog to walk.

Just

" Maybe IF'S"

Dumping on a lee shore .

No shadow to spike the hour

or feathers  to fan the storm.

Just cold hands and a heart shaped stone.

NO SHADOW

NO FEATHERS

NO SEA

NO SKY

NOT EVEN TIME,

Just a fading embrace,

On the shoreham Wall

The Broken Novel /fragment   Ian Miller © 2008 alll rights reserved

ARE YOU SICK OF LIFE MR THOMAS?

Brown Snout, Foxwelp, Sheeps Nose, Black and Balls Bitter Sweet.

Cider fair.

TA RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

OR is it Conium Maculatum?

A tincture of Hemlock and oblivion that you require.

OR! OR! just, maybe, perhaps, an edifying cup of Hypericum Foratum

A gobbit of St John, sanity, wort and all?

IS IT! ’ MR THOMAS! or is there something MORE ?”

The two sisters pirouetted and flapped their arms as if trying to fly and I knocked over the coal bucket in my ungainly haste to stand.

I turned to confront the unknown speaker but there was nobody there, and Look as I might I could not locate

him anywhere in the gloom and congestion of the large room. Grabbing up one of the candles I moved towards a large oak cupboard

and congestion of furniture to my right, thinking this is where the speaker might be hiding

but before I had taken more  than a couple of steps I was bought up short by the restraining hand of Clara

tightly gripping my arm, shaking her head and mouthing a silent no.

I was really surprised that such a small and slightly built person as she could exert so much pressure

and stop me in my tracks so easily. If I thought to argue the grip of Amy on my other arm settled it.

Suzie Pellet Ian miller © 1997 snippet

Mum : She was sick a lot, but pretended everything was alright. I remember; she sang the same song over and over again and if she didn’t do that she hummed it. She said it was a comfort, and reminded her of my dear dead Father and happier days

For the record, I write it down, as I remember it:

Cherry Ripe
Cherry Ripe
Ripe I cry
Full and Fair ones
Come and buy.

If so be you ask me where
they d grow I answer there
Where my julias lips do smile
There’s the land on Cherry Isle
There plantations fully show
All the year where Cherries grow
Cherry ripe
Cherry Ripe
Ripe I cry
Full and fair ones
Come and buy.

It sort of got stuck in my head and I sing it a lot myself now.

I remember her night coughs, and the bloodstained towels. She said it was nothing, just a spot Inca Sunshine, and I was not to worry myself.

When I was nine, it was a Tuesday, drizzling like always, I got bitten real bad by a Baboon from the Zoo. It jumped out of the shadows at me ,just around the corner from where I lived. Somebody, said it was a dog with a twisted spine; but in the darkness nobody could be sure..

It chewed up my right hand so bad, that they had to cut it off. Errol, my Mum’s friend wrapped it up pretty good and gave me powders for the pain

When it healed over, he did a neat fish tattoo around my wrist and up around my arm. It hid the chew marks a treat.

It rained for ever, and we were always wet.

1:30 Tuesday 002-

It was raining again. Five o’clock in the morning and raining again.
Storm driven, rat black rodent water, rushing in off the sea with a wild colliding hiss, tearing at old mortar and slates, looking for a way in to winkies room. It was five o’clock in the morning and getting personal.
Everything bad that had ever happened to Winkie had happened at five o’clock in the morning, and that was a fact. This rodent rain was the prelude to something bad, absolutely no question of it. He could already hear it fidgeting at the cracked glass in the sash window.

Sleep was his only aegis but now he was awake and waiting. It was personal. The distressed image of Squallthought running up his garden path, trailing coloured wires and hugging what looked like a car batttery the previous evening suddenly sprung to mind. Yes it was personal now, in more ways than one but for now he had to just keep still and hope for the best.
It had been raining and gusting for five days and the flooding was extensive. The Pig Iron Bridge was closed and he could not reach the stake out at Mr Brown’s house. He’d phoned Mr James to apologise and they had agreed that the Dwarve would have to rough it on his own until the bridge was reopened. Winkie wondered whether the dog suit the dwarf was wearing was waterproof.

He pulled at a lump of congealed amber sap which had stuck to one of his wing feathers whilst perched in the cedar tree overlooking Mr Brown’s front lawn. The Dwarf had said Mr Brown was real dangerous and Winkie had laughed sick to choking at the absurdity of tthe Dwarf’s statement . When it came to dangerous the Dwarf was A1 rat arsed crazy and but for the patronage and protection of Mr James, the powers that be, would have locked him up years ago. That said, The Dwarf had always been a good friend to Winkie and that counted for a lot in his book.

The rain was getting in. It spread in a dark swollen stain across the ceiling then crept down the wall behind his bed.
Winkie groaned and looked at the clock. It was five fifteen .
“ Holy Shit!”
Ever so slowly, his eyes fixed warily on the movng stain, he reached behind him with his right hand to the nearby coffee table, and deftly sorted through the heaped and festering tinfoil of a long abandoned take-away. Gobbits of congealed food and cardboard slipped from the table as his soiled hand re-emerged gripping a large grease stained economy sized orange aerosol of Blightright oven cleaner
It was an rogue brand long ago banned from sale but Winkie was lucky. He had six cases of the fearsome stuff under his bed.

When you aimed and pressed the nozzle a thin jet of piss yellow liquid shot out in a twelve foot arch, searig most everything it touched upon. With practise Winkie had learnt to control the emiissions from the cans and could range his squirts from six to fifteen feet. He estimated he was about eight feet from the wall.

Winkie waited. The head of the iron bedstead started to flickerer with a pale ghostly light. He remembered something the Dwarf had told him about a thing called St Elmo’s Fire and the picture he’d shown him in a book of an old sailing ships storm tossed, with its masts all a flicker and glowing with white fire but this was a second floor bedsit .

The stain rippled and vibrated violently, the light crackled, hissed, then ballooned out into the room pushing the bedstead before it. Winkie jumped back instinctively, over the back of the old padded chair near the window but not before pressing the nozzle of the can hard down and bathing the bulge in caustic fluid. Nothing happened.The bulge kept expanding, pushing the bed before it. The bed collided with the heavy old chair and pushed it back towards the wall trapping the crouching Winkie behind it . Push as he might, the pressure was irresistable. No question about it, the game was up, he was one flat seriously fucked up dead crow but then it happened. The bulge burst with a ferile screach, gagging stench and clamour of what Winkie could only describe later as the myriad beat of hooves .
.

As I walked on towards the hatbox ladies house pondering on the dwarves parting observation about bird spittle, I inadvertently collided with a diminutive oriental lady, who suddenly appeared in great haste from a basement stairwell at number 21 the Terrace like a rabbit from a hat. She was four feet tall, if that, and dressed in a soft sage green coat and a close fitting felt hat of the same colour.After a brief flurry and profuse apologies, on both sides, she handed me a green card smiled and hurried away. I turned to say someting further but she had disappeared. Obviously a woman’s perogative in these parts I determined, after my experience earlier in the day, and mouthed a quiet “Thank you”. I looked at the folded card in the receeding light. It was sage green like her clothes and on the front sported the black silhouette of a crow , wings spread in flight. It could have been something larger, a hawk perhaps but I decided on crow, opened it up. and read the following missive:

Excuse this unusual approach.

ARE YOU at a crossroads in your YOUR Life?
Are you undervalued?
Over stressed
confused?
WE CAN HELP
ring:

Ring where , ring Who?

Brown was real nervous. 
I’d followed him from the gift shop next to the Abattoir, down 4th to the cafeteria on Pumis Street.
He kept looking back as though he suspected he was being followed

but I’m absolutely sure he didn’t see me.

I followed him into the Cafe where he took a seat by the window overlooking the sidewalk

and ordered a green tea and a blueberry muffin.

Whilst he waited he pulled out the black plastic sack from the inside pocket of his coat
 I  was watching his face real close and decided there and then

that Mr James had underestimated Mr Brown.
When he extracted  the small red plastic car, pine cone and a piece of paper from the sack

I knew we where in real trouble.
I was going to  need help  and made a mental note to call Winky the crow .
They ought to pick him up now before things really got out of hand

but then what did I know.
The dog suit was working fine .

Brown didn’t suspect a thing.

He knew the space he occupied, offended the others sitting around the room.

He was a stranger here and they made that very apparent.

Nothing obvious perhaps, but he could tell.
He proffered his apologies and said the train left for Glasgow within the hour and it was vital that he be on it.

The white skinned, blue veined spinster mumbled her disappointment , but said she understood.

He left without acknowledging her companions and felt some manner of victory in the dismissal.
Outside the building he breathed deeply and shouted “Shit!”

He shook himself like a wet dog and set out for the seafront.

the broken novel ian miller © 2008

Beneath the Earth,
The molten rock,
Deeper still.
Lives the maker of crows beaks
and the fingers of ragged men.

Sometimes, when the day is old.
He comes up from his place of work,
To take the air.
Few engage him,
But those that do,
Speak well of him.