My eyes struggle with the light. It's blazing through the window searing the air. The clock on the video machine tells me it's 5:00 and I wince at the thought. On the other hand I've got 2 more hours to sleep, and for a few dazed minutes I watch the dust particles swim around like docile sea monkeys. It's too bright and I can't escape it but it doesn't stop me from dreaming.

I hear a grinding coming from next door, over the garden wall. The neighbor’s at it with his chainsaw again, but at 5:00 in the morning - I'm not happy. I go outside to take a look, peer over the wall. I lift myself up, it's him alright, short, fat, torso covered in fading tattoos. The color has run from the marks he has to remind him who he is, or isn't. He's got jeans on, he's always got jeans on and like his tattoos, they're fading, the life running out of them. I know it's going to be a fine day, warm, enough sunshine for everyone, but this fucker's always got his shirt off, even when it's cold, he's an asshole.

He is swinging his chainsaw wildly and I think he's going to take his arm off. He's got a cigarette in his mouth and the plumes are making him girn. He starts stabbing at something, stabbing and swinging, grimacing and I wait for the splatter, just waiting for it all to go wrong. These things always go wrong, it's a natural law. I think of a boy in my school who went to the army, one day he was with his mates, they'd been drinking and thought that throwing hand grenades at each other would be fun. The next time I saw him he only had one eye and one hand. These things are always going to go wrong. I wonder if he ever looked at the rounded stump where his hand used to be and marveled at that very thought, that once there was a hand there and in a split second it's gone, and he can see funny because that's what it's like looking out of one eye. One eye, one stump. I wonder if he looks at it and thinks about that second, how lucid it must have been, I wonder if he would like to go back. I saw an obituary a few years ago, it was either him or his father, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was him, he was never destined to live for a very long time, at least not in one piece.

I can see what the asshole is stabbing at with his chainsaw now. There's a bird, a cocky little bird hopping from branch to branch. As the chainsaw swings, it comes close enough but the bird just hops out of the way, just manages to avoid the barbed chain and smoke, the noise and the asshole trying to extinguish bird's life. Little bird hops over to the clothes line, asshole's there stabbing at it through the lines. The grinding chain cuts one of the lines, I hear a sharp pling as it resonates through the framework. The little bird is almost laughing, smiling and enjoying the game hopping through the lines, from one to the other. Asshole is stabbing up and swinging the chainsaw, overhead swinging and stabbing down. I'm amazed he hasn't lost a limb, he's not looking very steady, he looks weak but fat, and pasty - if that chain touches him, it'll shred him.

I stop worrying about bird. Bird's enjoying himself, otherwise he would fly off, leave asshole wheezing and swinging his chainsaw in the cool morning air. It's warming up, but the sensation of cool fresh air on my arms makes me close my eyes, breath it in, I want to remember. The fresh morning air, quenching and fragrant, the air drenched with a crystal quality, vapors of light.


I'll be taken back some day, the quality of light, the air coated with dew, moist and dense, like a lens. I'll remember the way I feel, the air I breath, the smell of it all, the cool light.

The chainsaw burns my moment. Instead of the sweet air, I can smell asshole, fetid, rancid - alcohol and adrenaline. His fingers tarred from smoke, slow cooked and ready to split. The skin taught, the grime and the dirt, long finger nails browning and cracked.

I look back over the wall, bird still hopping, dancing, smiling at me and laughing at asshole, playing with the chainsaw, the smoke and the exhaust fumes. I forget for a second that the chainsaw has one thing in mind, it's barbs biting at the line, plinging the frame, the lines dropping to the ground. I tell bird to fly away, enough fun and games with asshole and the chainsaw. Surely bird has better things to do, surely bird should sit from a distance, singing and feeling the crisp air on his wings. Wait for asshole to have his moment, his split second where reality bites, when the irreversible happens, one eye, one stump - gone forever. I'll remember the cool air on my arms, and asshole will remember the day he lost his.

I want bird to fly to safety, no need to be dancing around, hopping from danger, from line to line. No need for bird to know about asshole, surely bird knows there are nicer things around, nice old ladies with hands full seed and bird baths, gardens nurtured for bird and his feathered kind.

Reality bites, slow-mo pling and splatter, I flinch, the chain bites and wraps its barbed teeth, tear flesh and tangle wire, shred line and it all makes sense, the fumes, grey in the morning air, sweet smell now spent gasoline, poisonous, one eye one hand - stump, regret.

I watch, my throat fills, becomes thick, my eyes fill and distort my vision, like a lens, blurred and smeared. Lines flailing, whipping up into the air, swooshing as I have all the time in the world to work it out, frame by frame I watch it unfold, slowly, painfully. Why bird? Why didn't you fly and watch what should have happened?

Feathers float, like dust in the morning light, trapped in a beam carried by the warm sun. The lines whipping faster now as time speeds up, sucking me back to real time but the feather’s still floating slowly to the ground, edges gleaming, trapping vapor from the air, so pure, so simple, perfect. A single ray splinters from the edge of the feather and like crystal fluid it projects a spectrum caught by my eye, I'll remember this, even though it's not what was supposed to happen. Sadness fills the air, the crisp cool morning air. The grinding has stopped, the swooshing of the lines now gone, no resonating song from the metal frame, no smell of acrid asshole, no smoke, no life - just light, and feathers, now fallen to the ground. Bird's broken plumage - not what was supposed to happen.


morning dust to morning dust
the true and kind who once enjoyed
love and life, dance, trust
wings stop their playful beating
feathers fall to graves
and fly or float no more