ISSUE1

ARTICLE:

A ACCOUNT IN SPRING 2020,

BY O.E

Here we are. All of us. Somehow swam so far into a year that collectively still feels like a ransacked Spring. We've hurled our arms around the buoy, and the horizon is as miles away as the shoreline. There is no shoreline. Here, there are only waves, in fact, we are the waves. We float. some falter, some float no more, some always.

I have spent the last six months, and before that the last eight years, writing poems. Considering this year, however, has left me at a loss, drawing up blanks and altogether unnecessary. This shoddy sensation has hardly been such a bad thing as well, as as a white person, my words should only matter so much now. This is a big part of the reason why this sweet spot has taken such a time to manifest. How can we find the words, the responses, the tools to record and respond to what has become the most traumatic and peculiar, and frustrating, and freeing, and straining, and isolating, and learning, and communal, and lost, and meditative, and powerful, and resistant, and upsetting, and unlikely and, altogether consuming time of our lives?

A slow indoor March and April shift/rifted right into a focussed, harsh June. The public murder by police of George Floyd is now already the tragic strike of a match catalyst for what has become a frantic protest for the safety of Black and Indiginous people and against the immoral and unnecessary police state worldwide. I dwell in a small city in the North East of the (p)UK(e), and witnessed for five weeks BIPOC speakers deliver crucial speeches into crowds of allies and, sadly, racist fools behind a wall of indifferent police. On the second week of our protests here, broken bottles were hurled at our protest, police cornered us in their display of 'protection' though this allowed for us to be penned in and attacked from behind by thugs with whilst kneeling in silent protest. People were hurt, abuse was in the air yet the protests continued, though banned from the city centre. In the weeks following, numbers subsided but morale remained high. Speeches conitunued and solidarity was strong and aside. Sadly, the council here made 'group gatherings' (ie. protests) illegal following weeks of peaceful displays in our allocated spot, so the Black Lives Matter movement has, alike many aspects of society, existed on digital platforms for our city. This is frustrating and upsetting, but I write this account purely to record what has happened in our small town alongside the events of the rest of the world.

It is vital that we respond to our surroundings, the experiences of today, and account for what we need to resist/what we need to cherish and allow to grow. Nina Simone once said that "[it] is the artist's duty to reflect the times", and in what may be a collective loss for words, for breath, for movement, for will, this fills the cup with urgency. Necessary urgency. There is nothing I can say in this form that has not already been said, and of that I am fully aware, but I do think there is a duty to account for the experiences around the world.

I have talked with pals about how what used to exist a little in our every day but mostly in our badges is now firmly stapled into our souls. A deep-rooted disgust toward the police and the arseholes in power is no longer a stick'n'poke opportunity that you half regret three days after the fact. The conversations, especially with our parents and the generations around, are sure to crop up in resistance to this, however, it is the utter lack of autonomy of compassion, empathy, decency and soul that render the police state abhorrent. I am still in disbelief that police and government officials used tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters in the US, and have witnessed first-hand the void expressions and lack of care from police over here. Indeed, in protests here in NCL, UK, I would argue that the police worked against the BLM protests and their lack of action against racist, dangerous indidivduals led to serious injury within our peaceful protest. I asked an officer directly why they were allowing people to throw bottles at us and their response was, firstly, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" (said without looking at me despite my being immediatly in front of them...) then, "well there's just too many of them for us to handle, really". There wasn't too many of them to push us into so many dead ends that we were given no choice but to disband for the sake of keeping our BIPOC friends safe.

BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK LIVES MATTER

CONTINUE FIGHTING
FOR THE RIGHTS
OF BLACK, BROWN, INDIGINOUS, QUEER, DISABLED, POOR, BEAUTIFUL FOLKS
AROUND THE WORLD.

BLM

ACAB

ANTIFA

ALRIGHT: This is how it's going to work:

In keeping with the ol' analogue page turn, I want NAG to do anything but lag...therefore, each edition will exist as a perpetually scrolling page. This page is best viewed on a computer/laptop/projection screen, but should work on handheld devices too, just be sure to look plentifully around as it is a landscape endeavour altogether.

ISSUE 1 FEATURES WORK FROM, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: SAM MURPHY, JAKE TRELEASE, DEBORAH MOONSHINE, MILENA BEE, LUNA FAE, FAUSTA JOLY, HANNAH CHIDESTER, HANNAH BARKER, ETTIE WAHL, DAISY COSTELLO, PAOLO LUCCARDI, PAULA BLAIR, JACK KEMPER, CALLUM CONWAY, DOMINIC WESTON, JENNY MCNAMARA, JESSICA SALMON & JM.

All work here present in NAG is the property of the artists' and is, therefore, NOT to be reproduced/reposted/redistributed without the permission of the artist. Don't be shite!

...and so, at long last: TUCK IN.

ISSUE 1

- BAD TRIP AT THE CAR BOOT

PHOTOGRAPH BY JM OF "COUNTER-PROTEST" AT MONUMENT, NCL, 13th JUNE 2020, THROUGH BLM PROTEST AND RECORDING POLICE.

VALERIA

Swallow in Pelf City.
Hollow in streets gritty.
Fucked and again, made me
consort, highish, dizzy.

Clean up the Big Apple.
CEO’s steel castle.
Tighten up loose ends, then
lose, release, ungrapple.

Daytime I dredge clean, see.
Office’s filth needs me.
Nighttime I shift pretty,
dressed in gorgeous debris.

Knurled up elite concretes,
Following taut side streets.
Entered again, stepped in
right onto his bed sheets.

Sheets of that red cayenne
soak up the time, I then
kiss his Adam’s apple.
Sweats like ink from quill pens.

Teetering, tip, slowly,
tippling tongue, goldly.
Feels like my mouth’s singing.
Why sing one song only?

Different men use me,
Holding me hard, loosely.
Over a town foul, I
spread my cloth diffusely.

Feeling attacked, finding
acts aren’t an Act binding,
Pleasure’s no real contract,
Tongues’ll start unwinding.

Meretrix augusta, meretrix regina,
little Valeria, no more a queen than an apple core.

Meretrix augusta, meretrix regina,
little Valeria, no more a queen than a brothel whore.

Glorify me, preen a
She-wolf in between a
Crack and a sidewalk crack;
Not a Messalina.

For I am small, kinging
No one and not bringing
Pain; I don’t do coldy.
Thrust thawing, hips wringing.

Nympho’s the sneer, molten
Whispers to ears, swollen
Pride. I am no addict;
Hobby’s held and holding,

swapping of breaths - accrue
layers of warmth, construe
atlas-like lips leading
lost unmapped regions to

gold!- recollect ceding
so!- minaret seeding
so!- sowed sweet. Wake. We knew
urgent, peaceful, feeding.

Emperors send armies,
Perish unloved, but me:
endless petites morts, no
Horti Lucullani.

ya-ta-hey!

The peacock pitched panicky pacing on the side of the road. He’d hopped his flock’s fence and stealthily sauntered up the gravel path, over a mossy rotten soaked wooden fence, and to the bustling road where he stood now. His current employer, Farmer Winston, had quite rudely tried to deter him, and frankly this was the final nail in the coffin. His dream was to develop black and white film, and after being laughed out of the coop by Winston and his livestock cronies, he knew the roving wave of change was upon him. He knew in his heart of hearts that if he was well due for change, and more importantly if he didn’t make the leap at this very moment, he never would. His talon struts were frantic as he coasted back and forth in seemingly the same spot on the shoulder of the road, mud lathered on his cacophonous colors; he knew he’d be due for a wash by the days end.
“Once more unto the breach...” He thought as he drew his left wing out in fresh freedom, and subtlety rose his third feather to the left upward.
The key was to sort out the right vehicle; something pre-dating the millennium. The vroom and zoom of automobiles fluttered his feathers as sweat ran like wax down his brow. The farmers would know this cock had shuffled off any moment, and he’d be dragged back to his pen to serve as a mantel piece for the hens, being paid pennies on the dollar to shake his feathers to all the coyotes that wandered up looking for day old eggs. What a nightmare! He wasn’t some dime store whore. He was an artist! And anyone who challenged this idea would brashly be hollered at with a loud “ YA-TA-HEY .” No one would mistake his purpose while there was still breath in his pint-sized lungs.
Eight minutes passed as a parade of 2005 Mini Coopers and 2011 KIA Souls whist passed him. No-one batted an eye, they were all too proud to pick up this vibrant bird. He worried himself sick, wrought with the impending feeling of the thin wire holding this anvil of a plan was about to break, and he’d be crusted by the atrophy of going back to his day job. His fortified faith was beginning to burst. The strength in his wings waned as he hung his head in defeat. The shuffled of his talons began to point back to the farm, to the hens, as he started to pen his accuse of how a gang of mongoose kidnapped him for pocket change before realizing peacocks hold no value on the black market.
“Yeah, that’ll do.” He reluctantly whispered under his breath.
When suddenly the bellow of a 1983 Volkswagen Thing creaked from the road yonder. The dewy gravel launched about as the loud halt of the VW’s breaks shattered into the peacock’s ears. The beady eyes of an English woodland shrew peaked out of the window. His brow weathered from a long life of hardened shrew pursuits.
“The names Reginald Thomas! Where ye headed, you colorful bastard?” shouted a meek voice attempting to carry a large presence.

“New York! I-I’m headed New York City way.” The peacock said with a wavering confidence. This was his only shot at artistic freedom. “Hmmm... I can take you as far Buffalo, but you’ll have to trek to the city yourself!” the shrew laughing yelled.
“Fair enough!” the peacock said with elation, his beak even curving to form the vague makings of a smile.
Lickety-split they shattered into the fresh day with a ferociously that would challenge every tiger in town. His dreams were weaving into something that resembled reality. The epitome of his spirit began to ooze over and outward onto his composure, until an obligatory
“ YA-TA-HEY ” shot from his beak uncontrollably with the same ringing power of a freshly banged gong. This time it carried a different power, this time it was a joyous occasion. He’d write about this moment in his memoir when fame came his way. He was finally free as free could be!
The drive cross country wasn’t much in the realm of eventfulness. Other than Reginald’s snoring, and constant need to pull over at every barbecue joint they past.
“They don’t have it like this back home.” He’d say.
The peacock never asked questions or caused a fuss. He was happy for the lift. You wouldn’t see his kindness from a sea otter or god forbid a tortoise.
The two made it to Buffalo and the two steadfast diverged. Reginald rambling northbound to Prince Edward Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, where he planned to be the most prolific lobster fisherman in all of Canada. “Someone’s gotta.” He said just about eight hundred and seventeen times during there their road trip.
The peacock stood waving a farewell to Reginald the woodland shrew and turned south. He’d decided not to hitchhike to the city, or to take any kind of motorized transportation for that matter. The free air and fresh breeze felt too good to pass up. He quickly regretted this due to the unescapable fact that it’s a five day walk from Buffalo to the heart of New York City. But the peacock prevailed and smelt the sweet pungent plastic scent of film as he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. His toils were behind him.

EPILOGUE
After searching for three days the peacock found a room to settle into in the West Village. It was a one-bedroom apartment with forty-two roommates that’s names all started with the letter “U.” In addition there was a terrific view of a magnolia tree which went by the name of Patrick. He was so happy, and soon assumed a job at Porcelain Bull Photo and Digital Lab. This peafowl found quickly that he had a real knack for black and white film, euphoric that this journey wasn’t merely a pointless peacock pipe
dream. He was even praised far and near for the drama and richness of his photos, never failing to produce perfectly crisp images. In the following years to come he was deemed the “king of stop bath.” The peacock was ultimately baffled at how smooth and fruitful this whole journey had been. None of the felt like the normal go of things, but he was not one to complain; why would he?
New York welcomed the peacock with open arms and he faded into the urban menagerie with a strut in his stride, his colors printing to the sides of the bodegas as he walked about all of the boroughs. He was so joyful away from the farm, and he stayed that way for the rest of his days. Every morning the poets, bread makers, and sculptors would awaken to the melting bumblebee yellow sun rise throughout the city; warm light drenching the building with a glow only the age-old sun could muster up. As the light rose to its heights, the morning song of
“ YA-TA-HEY ” echoed throughout that big smoke known as New York; a place where a peacock could prosper.

SELF-PORTRAIT IN QUARANTINE, APRIL 2020

h.s.o.e.f.t.f.t

It rests on his tongue
like he’s receiving the Eucharist,
he joins faces with a stranger,
a shadow-warped process, that I imagine
takes logistical prowess,
scooping it from his mouth as they kiss,
she locks onto his wide eyes and swallows it dry,
that’s how I thought it would be for me,
cinematic, not quite –
fresh-faced, eager and willing,
I laid sprawled on my front like a dog
retching up a particularly tough chunk of gristle,
a jagged half, caught in my oesophagus,
the firm hand of a man I know only by his given name
slapping between my shoulder blades,
it dissolves, the sickening taste
slipping into my stomach,
which gargles with uncertainty,
my pupils open up
like vents letting out streams of hot air,
the kettle lid flip to say the water is ready,
it pulses from my sweat glands,
rinsing out the last dregs of Catholicism,
releasing me from the clutches of sexual guilt,
free to fuck without parasitic intrusions
telling me there is something wrong
with this kind of pleasure,
it soaks into the bedding, ready to be washed away
the next morning with Persil and Lenor,
sweet scent of White Orchid
replacing the salty residue of the night before.

STRIPED ROOM FANTASY

Community prevails in these bleak times, with solidarity transforming into an much-needed impenetrable force. My personal connections with the Pacific North West of America (I fell in love with an American...) has all-the-more made me so proud to see the creation of CHOP, Seattle's (stolen Duwamish land) Autonomous Zone that for a real, beautiful moment saw people take control of a police-less, stateless Capitol Hill.

Musings of Summer From the Lens of a Socialite:

"[...]to remind you, Summer will come again, humans will touch again. Hold onto your love. We're gonna need it."

Witches' Dance at Cunning Crow Apothecary's Faery Soiree 2018, Seattle, WA
35mm Minolta

3am Burritos in the City 2018, New York City, NY
35mm, Minolta

Magical Nights at Heather's 2019, Suquamish, WA
35mm, Minolta

I.

A nice old lady showed us her souvenir

She showed us its mother of pearl detail

turned it on its edge

showed us how thin the hard wood was

told us it was sharp enough to slice between ribs

and with a twist

rip them out

I was ten

II.

Please keep hold of this conceit

versing your remains

just visit our help

traversing its life

know what your parcel

reversing your time

this receipt is your conceit

Dog Murderer

It was something in the way the Souter foghorn orchestrated correspondence with the South Pier lighthouse that suggested all equilibrium was lost. By the twelfth day those orbing revolutions had drew their conclusions and settled on peace, stimulating a closure point to the plague that infected the town. The pained moans could be heard during day-time piss breaks in cold pub toilets, through mildewed windows of obscured glass. It travelled up back lanes and around corners of terraced streets. The chimes of the town hall clock spoke hourly and disturbed winter sleep. They interrupted REM with four-second contemplations of self-doubt. We are never more alone than those brief moments of solitude found when counting those famous chimes.

When a man disappears the first thing you’re asked is if everything seemed like it was okay. Were they showing signs of depression, or having any suicidal thoughts? After a prolonged search, a body will be found contorted into the rocks below Marsden Cliffs. Face down in jagged stones covered in seagull shit, wilted by stagnant sea water. Some men are found by relatives with rope round their neck or unconscious in the spare room of a damp flat. Pain-killer induced liver failure the cause of death. What’s the intellectualisation required to understand the unofficial suicide points that exist around the world? Cliff faces, wells, and bridges erected by humanity as a nod to the close availability of death. Architecture that provides the aesthetics for our towns and cities while informing us there’s a choice to be made if we need it.

Murder is rarely the conclusion to disappearances in provincial coastal towns, manslaughter is a lot more common. Some men are ran over by police cars while walking home from pubs, others die from one punch knockouts. On most occasions, suicide provides the closure points to the disappearances of normal men. The sense of community achieved as a suicide statistic outlives the tempered realities we endure. Conclusions are drawn by family members who find solace in the favoured method of totality. Something to appease thoughts that maybe he’s been murdered or came to a slow, undignified death at the top of a mountain. His body found by birds and worms before the day’s light.

*

In Shields there’s two parks spliced by spice overseeing the coastal recreation of stationary people. Victorian ideals dotted around the town intended to provide respite for its inhabitants. Often these parks provide entry into the comfortable nostalgia associated with childhood or being chased by leash-free dogs. Nostalgia is another word for class sedation.

21st century neglect has resulted in the semi-dilapidation of these parks, forging locations no longer reaching their intended potential. Each park is different. The West Park is closely associated with drug abuse, rope swings, and rape notoriety. Its close proximity to allotments and river industry cements its place in park purgatory as the perfect location for wholesome bowls clubs attended by old men on blood thinners. The South Marine Park offers views of the North Sea and features a miniature steam train that runs around a pond filled with malnourished swans. I sometimes dream about placing boulders and branches on the track and watching as the train derails and explodes into thousands of tiny pieces. There’s lads who run the pedalos, and an island in the middle said to be the forced resting place of corrupt councillors and children’s entertainers. The reckon a swans lifespan is about 20-30 years depending on its standard of living. This means the ones who’ve lived parallel to my youth are probably nearly dead. Maybe they’ve been dead a while. Kept buoyant by a stomach of plastic bags that refuse to disintegrate in the face of avian belly acid.

While the aforementioned parks are confident in their identities, their confidence is something the North Marine Park can’t be sure of. The North Marine Park is accessible from all compass points and escapable in the same vein. Entry or exit is not determined by gates. The intended circulation of people traffic was abandoned in the fight against fascist regimes. Remains of park railings melted down during two world wars are yet to be replaced, leaving behind stubs of military history along the park’s stone perimeters. Plans were announced to renovate the park and install some nicer pathways and a kids play area themed around the town’s Roman and maritime history. News of the renovation quickly found its way to the darker corners of the South Shields in Old Photos Facebook page where it was met with deceit. Sometimes photographs of notable South Shields landmarks in 1975 will appear on my timeline and I’ll stare at them imagining what life was like back then. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a picture of a mine, beach, or a prominent street, you’ll find comments demanding the construction of a Primark in Waterloo Square.

Climb over cemetery walls to experience the rush of sitting on the graves of people who died in 1937. Imagine their lives during lulls in conversation and wonder how the Christmases of 1888 or 1902 were spent. Westoe Cemetery is a location allied with the responsibility of chaperoning the ingestion of warm lager and teenage romance. I sniffed poppers for the first time in this cemetery and watched a lad glass himself with a bottle of Heineken. There’s no better place on earth to fall into discussions about the flavour spectrum of the last swig of a can, the final remnants, the bit that tastes of thick spit diluted with aluminium. South Shields smells different in the summer. Sunshine is good for vitamin D levels, but winter provides the atmosphere for the type of personal development that only the threat of love and humidity can blow off course. The breeding ground for regressions and disappearances; the perfect time for dogs to go missing and murderers to discover who they really are.

*

For centuries, men and woman have stood at the summit of the North Marine Park soaking up views of the ancient priory once home to Benedictine monks. Only a few decades-worth have had the pleasure of contemplating misdemeanours and stray errands while the broken clock on the James Knott flats stares back. The changing views of this precise location have allowed sessions of introspection that spur on concessions in and out of love. Sometimes you’d see fishwives holding the Shipping Gazette. The determined nature of the North Marine Park’s headland location prescribes a melancholy that stretches from its low-lying Ocean Road perimeter to the summits of its Lawe Top views. Administer this feeling daily, whenever you need it the most. If you stand at the park’s highest point and look out over the piers, the wind whispers to you in ways that suggest the joys of Christmas are only just around the corner. The landscape lies to you; it creates illusions. The winds up here are bitter, they ice your clothes and cause discomfort on contact with your skin. Parks and cemeteries can’t be beaten in their pursuit for serene leisure. Ideology is visible in their layout, design, and horticulture. The days of things being built purely the purpose of doing fuck all are long gone.

*

Most of the early 2000s patter about social media was angled towards the effect it was having on young and impressionable minds. It’s hard to believe that in the early days of 2009, Facebook was used as a harnessing tool for adolescent frustration caused by the football kick ups game. 10 years have passed since those days. 10 long years. Facebook is now a breeding ground for local radicalisation on forums that discuss the quality of local takeaways and refuse collection. For the first time in history, women who’ve spent the last 20 years trying to lose a stone are being

radicalised into hating Muslims because they’re bitter about photos of their friends looking nice in Lanzarote. Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for bringing Facebook to middle-aged white women. Refresh the comments to reveal the identities of missing men who murder dogs and crave their wife’s love. These people are the leading orators and unofficial policy makers of post-industrial town planning; the brothers of Chubby Brown fanatics and paedophiles awaiting suspended sentences.

Social media has encouraged polar extremes of self-awareness in youths who’ve found freedom in honesty and transparency. A rejection of the previous generation’s naiveties. Middle-aged Facebook has become exactly what the middle-aged wished it hadn’t; an online space where insecurities are magnified and pettiness accelerates behind the niggling feeling that you should’ve tried harder and loved more. You’ll find the odd bit of wisdom from socialist ex-miners but the world that exists behind cropped headshots from family parties in 2004 is too harrowing to consider. The abject loneliness behind the eyes of a 60-year old’s profile photo filtering xenophobic solidarity against the latest act of terrorism is where western civilisation dies. Who are the people behind the masks? What are the secrets that keep them awake at night? What if Nazi Germany succeeded in developing the nuclear bomb?

*

Myths and legends are born out of a human craving to experience fear and perplexity. The fear of abandonment, boredom, and death are all behind the stories we pass from generation to generation. Decisions made out of fear rarely end well. Accepted viewpoints come from the mouths of important people in positions of authority. What motivates the choices we make? No matter how much we want to eulogise the banalities of our existence, the necessary evils associated with fear and the myths they create allow us to take the moral victories we feel we deserve. The North Marine’s power to generate epiphany are non-existent. It’s a park with a view, a little green area turned into an idol of conjecture.

14 dogs went missing in the early days of December 2019. One of the coldest winters for over 100 years. The snow fell almost overnight, 8 inches relaxing on conversation for the weeks to come. Snow resting under orange streetlights rarely feels like Christmas. When dogs go missing the first thing you’re asked is if they showed any signs of depression or suicidal thoughts. Were they harbouring any internal dilemmas inherited from their owners?

Over the past 100 years, the intermittent howls of stray dogs have circulated around isolated locations of the North Marine Park. Some say they’re the ghosts of military dogs who drowned at sea; blown into the Black Middens by a rogue North Sea wave. The yelps of the drowning canines could be heard by fisherman on trawlers weathered by blistering cold. The audible horror of the desperate howls became a soundtrack for lonesome, night-time walks. You’d only ever hear the howls if you were looking for it, the type of thing you notice through detachment on a search for intimacy. The type of emotional stasis that paralyses you for six long months, an ontological retreat into yourself, progress dissipating when happier times find their way through via osmosis. You could’ve done without the interruptions though; you were finally getting somewhere. Unlike myths and legend, secrets usually have some basis in reality. They’re secret because we want them to be, because of the fear of external condemnation. One person’s secrets have the power to change the world.

Part 2.

The horsehair worm is a parasite known to occupy its host by slowly invading its body and stealing the nutrients from its lungs. The parasite enjoys gluttonous picnics in the poisoned bloodstreams of

beetles and crickets, thawing them from the inside out and corrupting the nervous system like a meandering cancer. Over time, the horsehair worm fully consumes its victim like an unmanageable eczema on the shin. Eventually you are referred to as the man with psoriasis. Your identity has been stolen.

Horsehair worms are experienced in strategy oppression and nervous system propaganda. Entomologists have found horsehair worms controlling the lifestyles of crickets, growing large enough to wear the cricket’s shell as a suit of armour, controlling the mantrip like a puppet. The crickets cease to be crickets in the conventional sense, more a trojan cricket used as a vestibule of insect free-market capitalism. Once the horsehair worm has fully-occupied the cricket they will expose themselves to rats and birds who will eat them and transfer the parasite to larger and larger mammals. Maybe there’s a baby cricket who feels his dad has been a bit distant recently. One day the horsehair worm will reveal its true identity. The teenage cricket will grow angsty in its adolescence and search for meaning in his paternal confusions. The realisation you’ve been raised by a horsehair worm during your formative years can’t be good, but that’s just life. Worse things have happened at sea.

*

The dog murderer was one of those myths passed from generation to generation, one of life’s few speculations reinforced and disposed of, but rarely witnessed by the human eye. The few who did witness the heart-cramping realities of the dog murderer were never the same again. Whole world views were changed on chance encounters with the devil. The propensity to murder dogs is something humans can’t ignore; those feelings and urges are within us. People who murder dogs reveal themselves after three months, their inner workings become chilling when you realise their truth. You could never place it, the type of behaviours and body language reserved for devout Christians working normal jobs. Normality embedded in the occult.

Pouring rain and bitter winds are enough to lure the dog murderer from its forgery in the undergrowth of the North Marine Park. Sightings of the unidentifiable creature were rare, and from the few reports that do exist the creature is described as some form of hound with an unnatural quadruped gait. First you heard the pained respiration and the disgruntled barks, then the smell of rotting flesh and medical disinfectant. Sensory signals that signposted the creature’s proximity on its journey to the park’s summit. The sound of creeping footsteps through foliage disturb your inner sanctuary. Turn around in fear of what you might see, accept that what you do see will make you feel both alive and dead synchronically. Shivers of terror perforate your larynx; adrenaline drowns your synapses. It feels like you’re the only person on earth, standing alone in the darkness while the flush of the tide dilutes the trajectory of the beast. Turn up your collar to shield yourself from the wind and the myths you want to believe. The realities of the dog murderer are truth. The tranquillity of darkness is only realised when fear is eliminated. The beast consumes and devours you. It devours us all.

*

The dying corpse of the creature was discovered by an inquisitive Doberman on an icy Christmas morning. The body was found seeking shelter in padded bushels and soaked leaves deep within the forestry of the North Marine park. The Doberman is now indebted to the vocation of the dog murderer; a natural reaction to the scenes witnessed by the poor boy. He won’t go near the park anymore, it accepts him, but he is repelled. The owner of the Doberman arrived on the scene just as the creature’s final breaths squeezed from its diaphragm. Snow covered exposed parts of its body

while frostbite was visible on its fur. Frostbite had begun to develop on the creature’s outer extremities, nullifying the arms and legs before making its way to the core. Watching something die on Christmas day has certain effects on the mind. The creature’s final moments provoked intense ceremony as it pained to deliver its final words. In the moments before death the creature spoke a silence that translated to both Doberman and human, an unconscious vocalisation of a being searching for truth and appeasement.

“Redemption…”

“I seek redemption, brother…”

*

The owner knelt in the snow and stroked the fur mutilated by scar tissue, hernias, and infected fissures. The freezing temperatures caused the patchwork scars to seize and wilt, tearing them at the seams and revealing the harrowing reality of the dog murderer’s origins. The Doberman sniffed at the beast, brushing the fur aside to reveal an infestation of maggots below the skin. The creature was strung together using a series of plastic zip ties and industrial chemical adhesives. Tears in the skin revealed internal organs and the body of a small man. The man’s body was riddled with arthritis and deformities caused by crippling exposure to the elements. Years of unnatural posture caused the man’s vertebrae to fuse and deteriorate. The man had woven together the skins of his murdered dogs and lived inside of them. His head was nestled in the rotting skull of a Great Dane while the skin and paws were corroborated using a mixture of Greyhound, Labrador, and small sections composed of Scottish Terrier. His remorse was visible in death; the final moments of agency drained from his body by maggots and regret. The larvae searched for freedom from the cocoon.

Dental examinations revealed the dog murderer to be a missing widower who’d lost his family to a savage dog attack while trapped in the boot of a Volkswagen Passat in 1998. The high-pitched screams of his young son being ripped to shreds by a pack of carnivorous fighting dogs was enough to compensate for years of gambling debts. Among the man’s belongings was a cracked iPhone4 with the Facebook app open on the South Shields in Old Photos page. A message was composed but never sent.

“I am the dog murderer. I demand a Primark in Waterloo Square.”

*

Unparalleled misery is paralleled in towns up and down the country. Misery becomes a way of life before the emergence of hope allows you to see things differently. Hope only lasts so long before romance enters the fray. The dog murderer had been through the motions and struggled through the misery to get to the hope. He battled through the hope only to fall short at romance and have his life tragically taken away from him. He eventually adopted a dogmatic approach and regressed from the world.

The howling winds and pathetic whimpers of the dog murderer can still be heard long after his final breaths. History will repeat itself. Misery will sedate and control you. The South Pier Lighthouse perseveres, and the Souter foghorn soldiers on. The North Marine Park continues to attract men in search of redemption and self-discovery. The idealist creations the Victorians hoped to create were finally utilised by disaster-ridden men who murder dogs and live in their flesh. The December winds continue to blow up the Ocean Road at the intersection where the two parks meet. The summits of each afford little shelter from contemplations of failure. The memorial benches of deceased men are always occupied.

Children grow into adults by adopting the same connections to the lionised monuments of the previous generation’s youths. Adulthood eventually reveals realisms that remove their meaning. Despite the insights gained from adulthood, childhood nostalgia will never dissipate. Myths and legends are real if you want to believe them. Reality is often more painful. Stories of the dog murderer will never be accepted until the parks dictate it. Lessons will be learned, but no action will be taken.

The dog murderer will live again. And one day consume us all.

Response to a Hirstian via Picasso Minotaur

by P Blair

Theseus did not come for

her;

everyone saw that.

Minos fed it the youth of Athens

in punishment, but it was hungry for more,

never to be sated

of its lust for flesh and power. It was born of revenge and used

to inflict revenge. The

abused child becoming the abuser,

using its strength to

rape.

Food For Thought at The World’s End

So it seems

there's a shortage

Of loo roll

Of hand sanitiser

Of people realising

That all this time

They should have been washing their hands

To the tune of happy birthday

Or god save the queen

(The anthem

Both national

And punk

work for this)

I saw it

In a meme

On Facebook

So, it must be true

But

It got me thinking

What else is there a shortage of

that we just seem to ignore....

Something to think on,

food for thought

for the next 14 days……

or longer.