KTM

I miss my son. He was born on the 26 th of January 1992 at 8am.
And I know now that I did not show my affection to him as much as I should have while he was
alive, as I passed most of his childhood in a heroin fogged blur.
We lived in Sheffield and I remember how he would draw on paper and how all our dishes and
sheets would often be dirty and how the soft blossum of his laughter would often near bring
tears to my eyes. I remember him standing in his immaculate clothes while drifts of snow
swirled away thru the streets behind him. And I feel now as if I deserted him in an ocean of
lights.
I remember going on flights with him and Alyssa, his mother, when he was a very small boy,
leaving from Heathrow, and walking thru the airport and breathing in deep the smells of the
magazines and books in the newsagencies, and the sweet perfume smells of the duty free
shops, and all of it seeming to seeming to take me back to my own childhood, when I was
travelling overseas with my own parents and the world seemed such a wide, inviting and
mysterious place. And wanting to, transfer that sense of wonder of the world onto him.
With both him and his mother now gone, I feel as if I’m learning now to accept things as they
are, to depersonalize the entity which I once saw as myself, so that everything around me
remains silent and unshaken.
And at night I dream of ships and skulls and of large queer machines; of great satin swastika
banners in halls and attractive young women slyly winking at me. But I never find them and I
watch the slow passing glow of eternal malevolence, and the young ladies dance, laugh and
sigh, in the bars, clubs and streets, and I see my son’s face at times over those of youths around
me.
I am posted-up in Kathmandu, Nepal now, and I think more of my flight here two weeks ago, of
my wait at the gate, and of the eyes darting cautiously around it; of the promise the world had
once again seemed to hold for me then, as I told myself that the car crash which had claimed
Alyssa and Kadin, my then adolescent son, had not been my fault.
Knowing that my flight would be boarding soon, I eventually got up and moved seats to one
which was a bit closer to the check in desk for my gate. And I sat back down again on a bank of
seats opposite this bearded middle-aged gentleman. And he was wearing a pair of glasses,
patterned blue socks, boat shoes, and khaki chinos with a plaid shirt tucked into them. And he
was looking down into a rather modern looking slim silver-backed iPad and he scowled at me,
for whatever reason, whenever I caught his eye.
Soon, on catching him scowling at me again I literally burst out into a fit of incredulous laughter.
I just, in that moment, I felt so damn tired of being scared, of living in fear, of seeing attractive
young women, and then pretending as if I wasn’t at all interested in them. ‘This year’ I said to
myself, ‘shall be my year of living dangerous… Of… Starting afresh somehow…’
And then shortly after arriving in KTM the thought came to me, ‘just a little taste for old time’s
sake, while you’re in a place where it’s so easy to find, and you no longer have any
responsibilties or ties to anyone’
Without Kadin, or Alyssa, it seemed I had to find a new anodyne against the cold brutality of
this world, which seemed to settle upon my windowpanes like frost…

...I feel strongly aware of my own mortality now, well aware of how the flames or rot in time
will come for all of us.
I know too of how man has been known to carefully sharpen his words like knives, then at
funerals place a boquet, bought up from blood like a poppy in the muck of the Somme, over the
casket.
I know of their, perfect control, and of the fine economy of their various inflections, all turmoil
and disharmony, reduced to contours, flatness… And then the dope comes on as dusk, and
outside the evening’s shadows pull faces and snarl, and I picture the strange ghouls outside
eating from mounds of sundered heads, as I lay debilitated, entirely sapped, however many
yards from the, brutes— as I watch the abstractions crossing and recrossing, my drunken mind,
and the howls and clatters of the night, creak slowly to an end, and only the softness of my bed,
the warmth in my veins remains, a final wedding in a world of loneliness, washing over me like
waves, as I sit on wet sand shortly below with a stone in my lap.
A papier-mâché world drifting slowly into the sun…
I think more back to my flight out and the gate now, shortly after I laughed at the fellow in the
chinos, I remember he made direct eye contact with me, staring right into my eyes, unsmilingly,
almost challengingly, for what seemed like quite sometime, and I soon faintly shrugged at him,
but he did not react at all to this, his face seemed entirely inscrutable and it continued to look
coldly on at me.
For a moment I even considered saying to him, something to the effect of, ‘Er, excuse me sir,
but is there, any sort of problem, here or...?’
I didn’t tho, and eventually rather just broke his glance and looked away.
…Ok, so, well, I’ve been here two weeks—two weeks? Something like that I suppose. And what
has happened...? I think of scenes in bars, watching the girls dance, as the dope has flowed
warmly over me, and I’ve taken sips from my cold crisp condensation-beaded bottles of Everest,
or whatever it’s happened to be at the time...
And another scene now comes back to me from the airport; I remember there were these
automated locked glass gates that I had to pass thru on my way to the gate, and before them
there was this, about two metre high service panel, with a place to scan one’s passport midway
up it, and a titled LCD screen at the top of it, and on this screen was written something to the
effect of, ‘Scan your passport below to proceed’ then below this in a smaller font, ‘By scanning
your passport you agree for your information to be collected'.
‘Well that hardly seems fair’ I thought to myself at the time, ‘I mean, I only paid however many
hundred quid for my ticket, it’s not like I really have a hell of a lot of choice in the matter here
now do I?’
‘I mean just what in the hell has happened to this race of man?’ I now ask myself. Words,
thoughts, ideas, conjecture tho, I suppose are no good. And if and when we’re to die, it will
mean what? More words, or oblivion? One chooses, I suppose, to allow death to have power
over him. It is what one chooses to give power to. To put on the chopping block, as it were.
When the telephone rings or bleets one can say to himself; death or opportunity, but it both
means the same thing. And does this endless iteration of human existance tire me? Not in the
slightest. Even tho all ideas, all men by now seem to have lost their meaning, their sharp

distinguishing edges, all hate and despair has seemed to have faded away from me here. And at
night in my private lair, I feel as if all men and women are slowly coming to wander thru life in
such a way, as they hang upon the mercy of time like lilies on a river.
And this my great bed itself seems to drift quietly down the long watery corridors of time, and I
watch from it as astronauts land upon the moon, as Shakespeare, in a small drafty room writes
and revises Hamlet and Lear and as the beaches of Normandy are stormed to such great, terror,
suffering and death. And I watch from it as Stephen Colbert and Adam Driver, thumb wrestle
each other with rings with plastic light sabers on their ends in a brightly lit studio…
Whatever parts of me that remain, that have survived this terrible drug, feel ravished,
incomplete; faded memories which once might’ve been dreams, faded acquantincies who once
might’ve been friends—and as it loses its sway, thoughts begin to snap at each other like curs.
Oh, what were those lines from the poet? Fool of thyself speak well, fool do not flatter, a
thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in several tale, and every tale condemns me
to villiany.
So I have another shot and watch as my bed drifts thru thru this great pair of stone doors, into
an emmense cavernous expanse, dim light falls on the scene from several lanterns. And a
wretched man on a rack shrieks out in pain, and I soon notice these great, inconceivably
immenese fruits on vines rotting around me, fruit flies dizzy in their orbits, and I can hear young
women, sighing from where they make love from various ledges, divans, beds, sitting up against
the great rotting fruits, in corners here and there, and presently I spot, a sprightly young
woman, in some dim light, rather ardently lying with a satyr.
I float past a green city, and later watch as a myriad of devils jump one by one from some steep
cliffs into the dark churning navy waters, crashing against the rocks below.
‘One day I will commit the perfect murder’ I catch a fellow whisper to a friend, as I float on
towards Dracula’s castle… And I think one by one of everyone I’ve ever met. Chaps from my old
football team and my old primary school. And I think of the motes of cruelty and compassion in
all of them. And it all spins drunkenly on; there being reason to live in an eggshell and to die in a
grain of sand. And then there are fireflies over the waters and for a moment, no memory, no
words, no culture. And yet every colour, every curve, every outline, suddenly seems to mean
something, all tangles in the weeds below, the splendid long night, and nothing to suggest
tomorrow as a plausible reality.
If one takes the boat out too far, it becomes hard to get it back in to shore, and yet, here I am,
two weeks out, with memories blowing ghost-like about my mind; of an evening; like some red
coloured fever dream which grew violent, memories of an old baby sitter in the dark, kisses, like
drunken youths, running here and there, then certain invitations—and my feeling that much
had to be readjusted in my head, then again once more, when the lights went back on and the
spell had passed.
Memory, I suppose, has many wafting rooms.
One drifts on past fake mortal trees and late night crawls thru mud, wire, cadavers, blood, to
strike resting foes with daggers and clubs, past the great pushes, blasts of fire, and the hun’s
deadly hail and clouds of grey smoke, and how high can one place a face, that its loss can be
akin to such immediate terror?
Ah christ, my nerves feel shot to all hell.
Some nights I’ll walk up to the monkey temple, when I’m feeling alright, and see the moonlight

over the river and think ‘wouldn’t it be nice to point that out to old Alyssa or Kadin’ or ‘wouldn’t
it be nice if Mr. Van Gogh could see that, the painting he would see in it’
Sometimes I’ll look in the mirror in my little ensuite bathroom and feel as if my youth is starting
to slip from me. I will think that soon I will be an ugly old man gazing in wonder at the beauty of
fresh youthful women, and this piques something of a, desperation in me.
And I will get stoned then drink in bars and talk to anyone who’ll listen and make an ass of
myself, and the allusions of some of my drunken evening conversations are inescapable. And
then when I have scared off all my new friends, in my pad with my watercolours and pens,
perhaps on some, subconscious level to ward off feelings of my own waning youth and vitality,
I’ll find myself painting rather sprightly and fresh young women, laughing, dancing, smiling, and
at times even making love.
And then I’ll be offering up drunken opinons on Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, Le Sidaner, Degas,
whoever, to anyone who will listen.
And later, as the dope begins to lose its hold, I’ll start to feel as if I’m watching myself slowly
deteriorate, as if from the view point of some other man. And around this stage, I can only
faintly speak out of the vast encroaching darkness.
And I’ll eventually muster up the energy to shuffle on home and have another shot before I go
to bed. And I’ll lay there hugging my pillow and then in time I’ll come to find myself in strange
worlds… In the hold of some old ship, with a lantern swinging faintly above, dimly illuminating
the scene and then you’ll notice the smears of blood about the dim wooden planks of the hull;
or you’ll be in some great cavernous hell, watching the swarms of great bug-like ghouls crawl
up the distant walls of the place.
…As I type this now I can hear the noises of the squalid alleys below, and from my window, I can
see a messy, spider-like tangle of black wires.
Ah how it all seems to be falling apart now, with one foot in eternity.
Tho in the darkness, I know, the faint images of this garish world will fade away, and the new
ones will take their place, the sweet beckoning of some undiscovered country.