The Last Of The Numchuk Oligarchy

.... and the air is still thick with water, a humidity that brings sickness with the insects attracted here by the warmer winters. We brush them away but they persist, making us sick in ways we could not believe. But still no one starves these days. We may get sick but we do not get hungry, not yet; not until the desert marches North and has us all in Africa. What will the world do then poor thing? Here is the president curled up, fingers in his ears just like yesterday.

The green marines are your ambassadors, white boys from the rolling prairies, the forest states, the prisons, so used to cultures like this, taking bullets and coming back to festering resentment of the tasks set before them. This one rallied those under him, shouting through the dust storms and dropped off the building so unfamiliar to him. They are all so nervous, twitchy and thirsty in the dry heat. The air con is down again, like the graphs.

I am back and young again, stalking the city valleys, the dark and snowy underpasses and the doomed youth stand thin and expressionless for the photographs, at least one of them thinking he will change the world. No one answers the questions, worrying (correctly) that they have nothing to say. What are they in it for? 'Kicks' thinks the thinnest one, wanting to score something soon to keep him sharp and wordy. And years later his mate will live comfortably on some anti-depressant - writing rubbish and making money. And that band was me and my friends, so unoriginal but thinking we were the only ones. The world is so small that I must be the only one. Was that how they got their name. Just read around you; see the trails of gibberish and expectation scrolling up your screen. Or maybe down. We track back through history, knowing of past and future in one big line, never sure which direction we are travelling in. And time goes nowhere.

She is here in the field with me, lithe and long and wordy. I think that no one else can see her; they walk through her not hearing so I start repeating what she says; I suppose she is in my head but I see here standing next to me, right here. I point but I only say this to you, also in my head. Something has changed to bring this back in different ways. She is blue, not dressed for this day, more like for a party or some simple day of making things in clean houses, cool English summer light, no sun but grey diffusions. And still she is here, hands as punctuation and expression, lit and faded like turning the contrast down. For us it starts to rain, until we are all dripping, struggling into the crinkly, crushed waterproofs we carry at our belts. But she stands, still talking, making wars go away, being irrational on top of being not really here. I am bent double, in pain, and wet, a curtain of water falling from my hood, into my face. I strain to hear her now. The mud is taking over, earth over poetry and public speaking.

We get paid more to pick now. They want the stuff off the ground and out of the rot so we get paid an hourly rate, one which makes us feel better when we reach home, muddy and aching, waiting for a thin evening of reading and listening to the crops growing outside, reaching up as only man can make it, waving in the wind like yellow inland seas. For a moment I have forgotten her in this deluge, but looking up I can still see her, not working and not existing, still talking to the women around her all those years ago. The strawberries are just mush now, no sugar, no red, just black and rot. She fades.