travelling

he travels all the way from the tip of her toe to the nape of her neck. he travels across the mountains. he travels by foot into guarded territory. he travels in time from then til now and waits for more travelling tomorrow.

hungry

i think i have a worm in my tummy, she said.
he looked at her and said, but darling, you ARE a worm.
she checked, and it was true.
so she went an sucked on some lonely bay leaves that were lying around after the storm.

the fucking hand of destiny

this is the way it works. the hand is covered in gold rings. it's a clumsy hand. well intentioned, for sure, but nevertheless. the hand decides to pick someone at random. and off it goes, shakily approaching its subject. rings clinking away. and bam! just when it means to lightly caress the chosen one's shoulder... a dog barks in the distance, the hand is startled and someone somewhere get a slap right across the face and it will take a full twenty years at least to recover from the shock. the fucking hand of destiny.

doodle

there is a line invisibly drawn from the tip of my nose to the tip of your head. on the line there hang two old pants, a lacy bra, and my mother's old pajamas which i've not been wearing lately because you're allergic to hemp. these things are pegged with the beaks of golden chickens. laying eggs from dusk til dawn the chickens cluck away endlessly and eventually lose their beaks, which are then carefully picked up by dwarves but only from the hours of three fifteen to four sixteen in the morning. this is because at this time the constellation of orion is well hidden, and as everybody knows dwarves are scared witless of hunting dogs. specially dalmatians, and what else could they be up there glittering and shining away over the line. the line between the top of your head and the tip of my nose. which one day a spider will unravel and then you'll go this way and i'll go over there. just a little to the left.

dramatic

a goose had been travelling for a long time when it decided to land on the roof top. under the tails a couple of worms got a fright and died of respective heart attacks. further down under the ceiling the snores of the boy covered up the thump, and the girl got on with her morning breakfast, unaware. the goose preened her feathers under the morning sun. the sun, as is often the case this time of year, was sighing nuclear flares, fed up with having the same things around him year-in year-out. those pesky planets do nothing but bicker. jupiter was found to be scraping the olive oil from his olives "to make sure he didn't get any bigger", mars nearly strangled him. what's the point of leaving something so silly and so vain go round under the poor all-suffering sun? the goose didn't notice any of these conversations. she'd been distracted by the fact that mr goose has been an absolute prat and left her well behind on their way south. of course the only option was to sulk and lag behind. maybe he'd notice. maybe he'd realise how lonely it was without her. maybe he'd come... oh but just then a couple of crows crowed in alert but it was too late, the farmer had come and shot the goose. and a jolly good christmas dinner it will make too.

gray

there is a hillside and on the other side must be where it is. this is this is this is it. gray on top and silvery birches. there is a hillside and on the other side there it is. a gray cat and a gray-eyed woman. there in the hillside. with the silvery birches and the gray sky. there is a hillside and it is gray and climb it we must. to get to the rainbow coloured land.

hot stuff

hot stuff sits in a chair by herself for all of three seconds. first to come up is a bear from the northern hemisphere with a thirst for exotic stories. second comes a fox sleek and stylish but way to cool for his shirt. third comes a clown with green eyes and glasses best described as culo de botella. and hot stuff sighs, which makes her breast move up and down, and goes off with the clown, because if there is something in this world that can be stated without a shadow of a doubt is that a girl will always fall for someone who makes her laugh. and conversely you can also be damn sure that she'll fall out of love as soon as she realizes she's laughing at him...

the stall

in the morning she set off to the south bank with a carboard box, a piece of canvas, a tin of paint, a brush and a length of string. she chose a spot, set out the canvas flat on the sidewalk, took out the paint and wrote in big red letters on the canvas. then she took the string and cut it in four bits. she threaded each piece of string through each corner of the canvas and tied the resulting banner to the railing on one side and to a tree on the other. then she placed the cardboard box in front of the canvas and painted it red as well. finally she sat behind the box and set out to wait.

in the afternoon a man walked past and the writing made him stop. he read the words twice just to make sure and then he sat beside the girl. she looked at him, smiled and make a snaking motion with her hand. twice.

round

there is a curve that catches my eye in the mirror and it's chocolate chip cookie shaped. the curve follows round from my hips to my navel and up my chocolate chip cookie shaped tum. chocolate chip cookie breasts spring out from the middle of my chocolate chip cookie chest. i wink at my chocolate chip cookie self and it offers from the mirror, with a chocolate chip cookie shaped smile, the last chocolate chip cookie for me to have before going for my chocolate chip cookie flavoured dreams.

there was a time

long long time ago a girl with smooth skin and lots of friends travelled across the seas. on her journey she met a couple of giant squid with a weakness for guacamole. it was lucky for the squid but a tragedy for the girl that she just so happened to be travelling in a boat exporting fair-trade organic avocados from guatemala. the squid went completely mental. one of them grabbed hold of the boat while the other used his tentacles to mush the avocados into a seaworthy seaweed guacamole. the girl was sucked into the smaller squid along with a ton of the green stuff. this in itself didn't kill her, but in the squid's stomach she found a diamond ring that promised to make all her wishes come true. so she wished for everything to be ok. and the ring made everything ok. but then because everything was ok she got so utterly and completely bored she died there and then. and so it was for the girl with smooth skin and lots of friends.

stranger things have happened

in the republic of XXXXX there are two queens that do a job-share. one of the queens is ambitious, efficient and pragmatic. when she's on the job, the palace gets cleaned, laws are passed, heads roll. the other queen is a total daydreamer, living completely off this planet and finding difficulty in remembering even the most simple of instructions. when this queen is on the job, flowers grow, rainbows are seen on the horizon, farmers take days off to take the milkmaids to the fair. one day a gigantic penguin came to the republic of XXXXX and ate both queens. instead, now the kings got to run the show. first they killed the gigantic penguin, then they sat round, had a few cigars, celebrated their good fortune and slowly let the country go to rot.

commitment to the cause of nothingness

one of the most eminent inactivity scientists in the western hemisphere is undertaking a groundbreaking experiment. the scientist has taken to her bed and is planning on never to leave it except for physiological necessities or getting drunk. while it may be argued that others have tried this experiment with varying degrees of success, never has it been carried out with such commitment, strength of character and abnegation. we wish the scientist all success in her new venture and look forward to the final report on her findings as soon as she resumes what we now call normal activity but may need to review completely after the results are in.

heat exhaustion

one day the girl closed her eyes and couldn't open them again. her brain dripped slowly out of her ears. no prince came to wake her up.

vestal virgin

finally when she got to the age of thirty-nine, she said sod it and went off with the guy who had given her the white rose during the festival. she didn't mind being buried alive, it all had felt the same to her anyway, and now she knew for sure.

itchy

once upon a time there was a man with a very bushy beard and a pair of blue eyes like a sunday morning. a girl came along and scratched his beard and he liked it so much that he took his portable solar powered chain saw, chopped off the girls hands and put them in his red rucksack for later use.

unfortunately the fingernails on the hands kept growing (hairs, nails, isn't it strange?) and eventually they got so long that they became too scratchy and the beard got all bloodied and patchy. so the man had no option but to get on his chevrolet and drive to the nearest body part recycling site to dispose of the now useless hands.

meantime, the girl, after recovering from the inital shock, grew another pair of hands and became hugely famous through the writing of slightly cookie horror stories.

improvement

he said today i am 79 years young. she listened to the cliche and didn't flinch. he'd been carrying a case of water around ever since she'd met him, and she hadn't had the inclination to ask why and wasn't about to do it. he pulled out a red fish from the case and put it i his mouth. it's a birthday fish, he said. it will make me grow to 6 feet tall, which is a birthday wish i've been keeping for just this occassion. in spite of herself, she was touched by this gesture. she had developed a painful back ever since she'd join him in his travels, for stooping to hear what his short-ass mouth would say. some days he was the most interesting man she knew, and the water case would produce lobster for them to eat. other days there was only jelly-fish and staid conversations. it wasn't a boring life, even if there were times when they both had to run away to escape the intense desire to tear each other's hair out. still, 79 years was a long time, long enough, she thought, so she produced an axe, cut his head off and ate him there and then.

marketplace

on the side of the road there were three women dressed in extravagant outfits setting their wares on pretty blankets on the pavement. one was selling kisses in the back of your ear, a cheek gently rubbing against your hair, eyes lost in your eyes. the other one was selling arguments that make no sense, cul-de-sacs masquerading as feelings, incomprehensible actions. the third had a ticket to south america and a wink. i bought them all. i am a rich girl right now, after all.

timing

Originally uploaded by ladelentes.

if you had looked round the tree two minutes ago you would have seen a little frog sitting under it. circumspectly.

this frog is terrified of women. because women just can't stop themselves from picking him up and planting wet, disgusting kisses on his mouth. silly women. and they keep giving him cold sores and all sorts of horrible cross-species diseases. it's only a few days ago he got rid of that nasty, nasty...well, better not to mention it here, really.

he's only a frog. that's it. plain and simple. a frog. nothing more, nothing less.

and i know that. of course. after all, i'm not the kind of woman who goes around kissing frogs, am i?

but the frog can't risk it these days, so as soon as i started to get close (just to take my picture, naturally), it jumped off in a panic, ran straight into the serpentine and i never saw him again.

old billingsgate market

old billingsgate market
Originally uploaded by ladelentes.

i put the basket down. having travelled all the way from the sea, it was a miracle the oysters were still alive, but alive they were, wriggling in and out of their shells, knowing their fate. it was still early light and i sat there, watching the oysters, feeling a faint haze creep over along the river. from the sea to the land. lazy haze, carrying news of whales and mermaids and stray dolphins. coming back with stories of deer and elves, told by a madman who lives in a cave. behind me the market wakes up from late sleep. fuzzy. unwilling. too bloody early, it sniffs, too fishy. stop your daydreaming and come over, it tells me. come over, sell your oysters and buzz off.

traitors' gate

traitors' gate
Originally uploaded by ladelentes.

the queen passes her sentence. you are to be taken to the tower in preparation for the day you'll be hung, drawn and quartered. you look back at the sequence of events that took you here and sigh. if only you had listened to that crazy witch. she had whispered softly in your ear while she cast her spell. she had warned you not to close your eyes to your own heart. but now it's too late. best you can hope for is to make friends with the tower rats, so at least you don't feel quite so lonely while you wait. wait. wait.