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WITH THE DEAD by Philip Philmar
The dead are always with us gazing from the gods and peering at our performances over the mantlepiece proscenium. Shuffling and muttering at the back of the shadowy auditorium.
Sitting with the dead. They stare disapprovingly from empty sockets rattling their bones clacking their teeth kneecap castanets clicking tipping separated finger bones onto the table tops like dominoes. Tumbling into trip-me heaps and rearranging the fluff under the bed with their ribs. Paper skin rustling like discarded wrapping from a disappointing gift - organs left carelessly to rot in the middle of the room. Uninvited and persistent the bloody dead - leave me alone you dead lie in pieces out you go!
Here they come again with their dances of decay scattering old birthday cards and fading the colours. Peeling the wallpaper behind my back chipping at the paint work and pulling loose threads on my clothes. Loosening picture hooks and drawer knobs and letting the air out of my bicycle tyres. Oh, the dead they don’t care - why should they? Tarnish and old varnish is theirs rust and dust must and fust but not lust - oh no that’s for the living.
In bed with the dead: touch their withered sighs then put your ear to the ground and hear the whir as they spin in their graves - dry dynamos of despair. | ||
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