A Fairy Tale

She licked the creamy head from her beer. He dribbled about Derridada and oh the sublimity of imagination. The Sophisticates. Glum public house lighting roasted their conspiracies toasty. They were the state-sponsored chinwaggers. Every room for them was a classroom. The world was a library with a high shelf awaiting their contributions. Each morning they wiped sleep from each others eyes that they might re-view again.

He adored her wit, she his candour. On these frosty evenings they supped away the words by the pintful. They patted the pub dogs. They tipped the tiller. In this theatre-in-the-round they clocked the slow dance of time. Ruddy faces redden into the sunset of life. Ah, to mix a cocktail of metaphor.

Then the night got mouldy. He checked the fuzz on her tongue. Yes, and the lights arose for the end of their performance.

Stumbling from the bar they met a dizzying scene. A theatre of conflict. Pale students dodging tuncheons and shouting for the workers. Yellow jackets in circles. The cries of the students misted in the winter’s air as vague smoke signals. The police beat out the minutes of their overtime pay on the faces of the weak.

He caught her hand as they charged the bastards. Stumbling over a collage of teeth and sputum, the blood danced red on their banners. A confusion of fizzing lines. Chemical odours. Noses changed shape. Throats roar raw expletives swiftly censored. The damn thing’s a circus. Violent aerobatics hung from ropes of gristle. The dogs are shouting MORE MORE AMORE! Horses dance between fireworks! Oh flash go the cameras! She held tight her fist, refusing to pay for admission.

Seasoned topers, they knew when to leave the party. The anarchist brigade crossed the courtyard to their own rapturous applause. They liberated the foyer. They took to the stairs. They hit the roof. Daub your symbols comrades, we’re only in bloody occupation! The walls were their library now. Electric licks from sound systems and the air fills with tweets. Sing loud you doves of peace!

Her feathers were still ruffled. Hand-in-hand they flew into the rafters and made themselves a nest. Let us get laid anew, she cried. Their tongues, freed from sound, grew wet with a new eloquence. Their infinite revolutions rose organically from meetings of lips, loud with slogans from fingertip placards. Their euphoria fell softly over sheets of scripture.

That night he dreamt of dry bread and dripping. Gritty mouths cracked open to battered cod. He dipped soldiers in ancient eggs… supped at them… felt the embryonic syrup slide through his palate... pulling them away he found them black with coal dust. Then a gasping for air. Then a coughing into blackness. Sourness in his throat sprung a leak and he vomited up ink.

He awoke to the splintering of the woods. The door was felled by gruff police hands. He looked at her. She at him. They kissed and whimpered. They already knew that their tongues had gone. As the filth spilled in they found a boy and a girl wrapped around each other, pressing their open mouths together. The only wetness was in their tears. You have the right to remain silent.

They kept their heads down inside, gave no lip. Got out to find their library passes revoked. Out of the hole and back on the dole. Their bus passes stamped out with a gavel. He found himself a job in a lollypop factory, never to taste success. She found herself a new man who gave her a new tongue. He’d carved it from all the pulped editions of Capital that he’d never read.

Now she wore her tongue on her shirt. Now he shut the fuck up.



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