I Am A Curious Yellow

I kept thinking how terrible it is sometimes here inside. I would drive the streets, white, smacked up and more often than not- cold. There's no living soul I can talk to...there's nothing shaking, no way of getting it out - this storm inside. I couldn't talk it out and I can't make love with it, and nobody's listening, and I sit on the sofa with the wind knocked out of me, watching the flickering light from the street lamps dance through the leaves of nearby trees and onto the ceiling of the darkened room. Time is passing so they say. I'd better get it right this time because they won't be no next time.
      I must have passed out at some stage because now outside it was raining, and I had no recollection of plunging into sleep. Waking in the night to the sound of the rain falling, why do I make of the rain a creature in sympathy with what I feel? My thoughts turned to Toni and the babies, who seem to be living in a distant galaxy.

    A fresh, stimulating breeze was blowing from the sea, but it broke against the blocks of buildings and was scattered into thin unequal squalls that stirred the grass. Clouds were floating southwards over the steely, violate - tainted heaven. In a small glade about a mile from town, we came upon a long trail of corpses. The bodies lay flung down, some holding hands, shoulder - to - shoulder, in various and frequently horrible and grotesque postures. We looked at them, like the living do when confronted by the dead. Our heads on one side staring at their faces, we seemed to mimic them. Then the cloying smell of decay wafted over us...

    It was a hot summer. The city was becoming like a paved swamp. Hot mushy winds blew in off the Thames but never seemed to clean the air. Diesel fumes were trapped between the street and the thermal seal above. It clogged lungs making breathing difficult, and gave off a reek of mildew and rubbish. The moist atmosphere, overall, smelled of crusty shit.
    I seemed to be living my world like the movies. Like New York City 1976, and the war is over man!  We were pulling out of Saigon and fuck the gooks...kicking the desperate fuckers off the rails of the chopper like scum...my vest grey, stubble most of the time, armpits and crotch unwashed. The spiral downwards was reminiscient of some Bowery boy on the skids. All I could see was Rod Stiger, "Give me a break man! Just one lousy break! I got women and children out there for Christ sake! Please!" The air was humid and dreamy.

    "Yeah sure! The guys in the rows of body bags over there are going to jump straight up, soon as this shoot is over...I promise."
     "You hear that mother on the wire? Sobbing...it sounds like a baby to me. A baby fresh from the womb. Can you not hear its mamma singing... go to sleep my baby? Well I'm gonna put the mother to sleep."
    The night lit up with orange flares. On the faraway hills purple rain was falling. He slammed a large shell into the breech of the short - barrelled rifle and held up his hand for silence. He was turning slowly...smelling the cordite filled air. He held the gun at an angle upwards and pointed it out of the trench. The youthfulness was sucked from his face. His lips were grey. It was no movie anymore...in the dark, black, night...the baby was crying again.
   
    Who is King in the land of a thousand arseholes? It is six - o -clock and the screws are rattling keys and banging cell doors open. It is time to slop out. The cell door opens and I pick up the chamber pot and empty the contents into a bucket that is held by another prisoner. I am nearly sick looking at it and the smell is fucking awful.
                   "Come on, sling it in and look sharp!" the screw shouts, "I've got ta get me breakfast too ya know!" I go down to the recess on the landing with my enamel jug to get water for washing. There is one lavatory and it is impossible to get in and use it, with thirty blokes queuing for water to rinse out the bottom of their chamberpots that what had not gone into the slop bucket. We then go back to our cells and wait for breakfast.
   
    The new baby was born and I was not there to welcome it.I had not held it as I had done Max when he was cut from the umbilical cord. I remembered the euphoria when he arrived. Toni's vulva had expanded and the crown of a minute head had appeared between her legs. The black hairs were moist and neatly parted, as if a thoughtful nature had groomed the child for its first appearance in the world. "Push now...we're almost there!" This giant head with a tiny body emerged, minature nose, mouth, eyes closed. Waking into the deep dream of life, he seemed old, infinately old, his smooth cheeks, his ancient eyelids and nostrils, his lips composed. It seemed he had been on an immense journey across the universe to be with us in our modest home with its waiting mother. And nobody had mentioned to me that that is how babies are born. The nurses were stitching Toni up and were too busy to speak. Through the tears I kept thinking there was something wrong with him. But I didn't care...I looked down at that head and felt a surge of love. It was our head and nobody could take that away.