some warmth, and a game of fives

spent some time in a church today. must have been in that place for 5 hours at least. saint michael on moor street, same road the train station is on. haven't been on a train in what feels like years. but it's actually only been months. april this year. took one up to edinburgh. when you smell like piss and shit most of the time, spending 5 hours in a train toilet skipping tickets isn't all that bad. it was a clear spring night when that old industrial leviathan pulled into edinburgh. thought i'd never see my backpack again after the conductor chased me through the station screaming wild obscenities through his nose as if i'd stolen his silly red uniform. lucky the train arrived real late, about 11, no police in the steel palace of edinburgh waverley. came back in the morning, feeling some natural heat for the first time in months, and found my old green and black companion slumped in a corner of the lostandfound. an abandoned crippled dog, no legs, just waiting for the comfort of his master's weary back. o, the sun, the sun. the earth so vast, at least half of it bathing in apollo's gift. and there i was, seeking shelter from the knife-edged cold of haunted birmingham. in a fucking church. the man in the robe, monk or brother (not sure the difference), smiling kindly at me. his mouth twitching so his upper lip rose to his nostrils. each time the smile breaking into a grimace for about half a second. he could smell all the places he guessed i had been, all the holes he was sure i had filled. and he hated the stench of the vulgar luxuries that had been stolen from him by his empty vows. his semi-earnest wish to see me saved fed him with blind persistence though. through his mind, a path, my path, riddled with needles and brown spoons and worn rubber bands, torn condoms, dead girlfriends who had wasted their final breath in a haze of toxic smoke, friends and family who had tried to take me into their hearts and homes yet failed miserably, their plans collapsing into a half-hearted sigh of pity and relief. and at the end of the path he offered me the hand of jesus. in my mind i saw a zombie with a gash in each hand and foot, maggots filling the pink gap in his side. in the corner of my eye, the coffee machine. he fetched me 5 cups in all. some biscuits, a paper bowl of carrot soup. heaven, like food you are, food you are heaven, heavenly gifts, we thank thee, oh and what other drivel, but oh food, warm food. and a roof, and a padded chair, some comfort. i have been there before, and i will go again so long as there is soup and coffee and biscuits. and they will save me again and again. poor brother, monk. there is a nun there i hunger for, but she knows my game so she keeps away. i have spent entire nights with her by my favourite spot on the canal, down near moseley. torn off her habit with my teeth, and by each stroke shifting the mud beneath her pale hairy buttocks, until she screams jehovah! backwards in some ancient sacred tongue. but all the time she was sound asleep in her tiny beige room in the convent up in selly oak. and my hand would always fill in for a hole, but never fill the hole (<- sorry for the cheap trick). so brother, monk, farewell, until again i come to gulp another dose of salvation. i've changed him, he must have thought. the cold night air is so much more acceptable than its daytime harbinger. you expect it. there is no hunger for the sun when the moon so blatantly insists on making a content madman of us all. the whole lot. the handsome families buying each other things i will only ever possess in a newspaper i will later use for a bed. the teenagers seeking refuge from their angst in their parents' pockets. the old woman selling the myth of dark, brooding germany in a tall beer glass: the entire frankfurt christmas market all but a gruesome orgy of usury and consensual mind-rape. victoria square, your fat whore of a patron standing proudly above her satire of an empire, in bronze gone green as if the garbage man keeps forgetting to haul her away to the dump. the library, so grey and ugly. but what a warm welcome these silent perverts and sad librarians offer in their scurrying eyes when hours have been spent in the company of the iciest statue in this whole town. o brother, o monk, a train to anywhere but here.

an introduction. hello

so, here i am. the library cold and humid as usual. its birmingham, england. and late november is dull, the dullest month of all. the pagan festivals of october have passed. i watched the indians in bright orange and red make the most of what remains of ancient diwali. that was some time a little over a month ago. i thought of anjuli, the girl i defiled as a teenager in the public toilet at handsworth park. every indian i saw on diwali seemed to have the same lamenting eyes she had, huge and uninvolved with the outside. then came halloween. the teenage girls in the witch and demon and vampire outfits, snow white legs bare, part hidden behind the black fishnets, the wind lashing, the whispering rain tempting me to grab one and show her the delights of the street. that was on broad street, the centre of all the devil's acceptable works in this city; there are other places. some smiled at me, but always with disgust. to the rest i was invisible; they either chose this blindness or the alcohol chose it for them. i robbed a packet of celebrations chocolates from the sainsbury's on broad street. i felt young again. i remembered jack, my older brother, the two of us trick-or-treating many many years in the past. the caramel-filled ones went down well with the cider i had from the previous night. a week later i found myself in any empty, warm garage in the south of town, edgbaston. the house seemed empty as well but i didn't want to risk being found. so i lay some cardboard in a corner and had an early night. the fireworks telling my sleeping mind secrets of a world parallel to my own. its a wealthy area. i had a friend from there once. but what friends i had, have all forgotten me by now. the family setting is both comforting and upsetting. but that night, the sound of the fireworks made that neighbourhood feel like home. i have a dog. but he's not really mine. i'll explain later. i have an old hiking bag full of clothes. its torn in places but it serves its many purposes well; i like to think it makes me look respectable, that my shabby appearance is due to my many years of traveling, not desperation and bare bones poverty. i like to think that the bag gives people space in their mind's eye to see me as more than i am. a homeless man who has lost almost everything. i have a library card. an hour on the computers every day. and access to all the many worlds that i never took interest in as a boy. and i have a woman. she lives in paris. it's no lie. and sometimes she writes me by email, but more often i write to her, long laments and groanful longing letters that must sicken her to the stomach. and i have my guitar. this is me, and soon you'll learn more.