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SiberiaWhen a thing is pushed to its utmost limits, it will return.- Chinese proverbChase a deer and find yourself without feet.An old second world war bomb shelter to be turned into a log cabin.Transformation, always.The sun flying into my blood, brushing sleep from my eyes. Little dreams last night, little of anything, just awash with doubts and waking shivering at dawn in the teepee. Of my future and us and when the day will come when my own transformation will take place. When will I become? I rise, running around the garden trying to remove my head. It won't come off. I gurgle, sumasault, stand upon it. Nothing. I bend down and examine the tomatoes. They grow bigger before my eyes. They become my thoughts. The London riots and Tottenham's broken glass, Libya and Muammar Gadaffi live on without me. Their images slick behind my eyes. The television reports endless, deprived, anxious inside of me.Return to my old sleeping bag and an image of you, asleep, quietens my thoughts. Sleep comes, warm and reassuring.I'm digging. I dug the graves of executed poets in Siberia. Lost all my fingers to the cold, dropping off one by one, day by day. I played my tin drum through the iron nights by an open fire. Each grave was unmarked but each carried their words in their pockets. Someone must bare witness. I knew extinction well in these days. My father and I working away, rust in my hair. A dull burnt out orange. He hits a hammer upon my knee. I, tin soldier. In the earth a mattress and black bed springs.The former tennant here, ten or so years ago, had fallen into a bottle that he would drink from every night. Only when he escaped covered in scotch whiskey from head to toe, with great strength and screaming did he venture to the bottom of the garden and place all that he didn't want anymore, mostly spoons that were too bothersome to clean, under the earth with a large shovel and fury in his eyes. The objects, whatever they were, did him no good and off they went.The shelter, malnourished and heavy, took entire familes inside of it when the bombs came down. There weren't many here, but enough. They would study their toes and feel hungrier than they would outside of the shelter. It did that to you and unknown sounds would come from their stomachs.The passion for surprise :Sit through this. While I wrote in the teepee, a giant slug slithered circles around it. Bigger than you or I. Jasmine hid under the blanket while I gave myself to words. She had been bellowing for hours and asking to play game after game. I stuck my head outside and speak to it after I'd had my fill of solitude. We had been quiet for an hour, now. He tells me that he wants to be best friends with her, to not be afraid. That he is for sure ugly but means no harm. That he only wants good things for her.Trembling, she crawls out from the blanket and asks what the slug is having for dinner.The neighbours' lettuce.Mmm mmm, he says.
