The Night of Cultureless Vultures and the Mourning Nature of Mothers - JLG Clift

We’re on the roof and the sun’s rising feels like it’s apprising slash describing something to us wings of birds flap hollow beaks wrap against the trees and the ground and the mounds of mud thud after thud until a grub is taken from the ground and wolfed down by a mocking bird that’s antenna bound now; there was a time when it used to sit on the brows of the furrowed old willow to the left of this view eschewed by a red brick school and several other structures creating a skyline that looks like fractured fragments of scar tissue on the fading face of the Base Mother of All lamenting endlessly resenting the construction even at this junction right now but repenting is out of the question for us because this is progress and Our Mother’s stress at the site fails to faze us even in the slightest.

The willow comes into sight when I tilt to the right it has leaves that remind me of a torn up pillow gutted and flung about strands still spinning reminding me of the strange fruit that was hung back in Mississippi the strands look like men women children in places at angles in shadows as the sunlight arrives and begins to dart through the foliage in parts when we’re off our faces either bodies or ratty shoe laces from an old pair of All Stars like the ones I saw in an Oxfam window a while back the black in the logo the same black that’s being sewn across the powder blue shroud of the sky by the bird a proud beak leading late sunset in colour out of place at this great sunrise the mocking bird’s cries and chirps echo and die trying to usurp the silence of the morning. The bird’s flying east and will become a thin black crease in the distance soon enough.

I think back as the beating black of its wings that have already started to sack the yolk of the vocal rise from the sky fade away into the sky that’s not yet grey but will get there soon I imagine.

There’s a chasm in Victoria I cannot possibly fathom or describe in its entirety that throbs and thrives from Pacha like a gash all the way to Southbank the evening sank quickly for us arriving at twelve miners were we mining drinks from 20 something’s acting like the moronic minors we’d meet on the 134 later that evening this place was teeming with spray painted prats fat and bloated ‘locked and loaded’ ‘rocking out with their cocks out’ boarder-line knocked out on the vulgar vinyl sofas by the overpriced booze.

"so Pacha’s shit"

"and Proud was waste as well"

"fuck Aquila and their dry prize draws"

"mate I’d have more fun on the Moors with the Wests than I'm having right now"

After we were done sweeping drinks we broke the link in our VIP pisstake wristbands and propelled them into the air with our hands watched the florescent strands twist before they landed of the ply board roof of a burned news stand not as planned but nothing’s planned I don’t understand the point in planning time spans itself randomly through our lives instances of chance dancing in enchanting trances daunting haunting flaunting hope and beauty that moves me and makes me think of the instances of chance as salmon swimming upstream scales glistening I’m always at my best when listening to their movements and swimming with them in the hems of my existence.

We tried haphazardly to reach the London Eye because it was big and blue and distant and on and there but we didn’t care for the sight really and were happy for the city to get in the way of the jumped up Ferris Wheel that never made us feel anything but contempt and confusion about why people go there and why they care in addition to a touch of despair over how much they spent to have what is miss-sold as the finest view in London. We found the finest view of London last night with no sights to been seen and no tourists to be found a place people pass by caught up in the rat race never looking properly. Well we did. After we took a piss on Parliament and threw a happy meal Big Ben’s way a half-eaten quarter-pounder splattering with a patter just short of his face as three came around without a sound and I’ve heard at least fifty different ways people can ask for a fag or a drag of yours if they were feeling less cheeky tonight; there was this one woman who was a tangle of fraying edges no distinct form (thanks in part to the drink I confess) just old carrier bags and a withering shape not blubbering at all but not smiling either beyond the surface disjointed from the appointed society wandering about in the wealth of the city all doors closed to her the tape holding a ruler in place as a splint on her forearm made my mind stir with questions about how and why and where and who if there was a who but I didn’t care for the truth I never do; I make my own. The blur calmly asked for a drag but I gave her the whole cig she smiled a toothless smile eyes glinted like a worn-down-washed-up-rinsed-out-wild-child in the tawny tar of the fag on fire and then she departed disappearing down the street with her bags now in her rig which was a shopping trolley from Tesco decked out with a broken brolley on the left side and a flag being dragged back in the black of the wind that used to say something, maybe, but the design was so moth raddled it was hard to tell I hoped she’d do well on the streets I hoped she kept shoes on her feet I hoped the sleet and the sheets of snow that will blow down onto this town and this city in less than a year would take pity on her because although I have little sympathy for are-nows or have-beens when things go awry I always hope it works out alright for never-weres who always tried and failed.

We found our view at the foot of a man who died Nelson on his column solemn eternally a well-dressed golem without a hunch in his back without fangs of stone protruding from his mouth poised for fevered attack on passers-by waiting to make their dry throats wet with their ruddy blood and his slithering saliva; there were drivers in dark cabs and night buses honking at us as we scaled the platform to see the norm of the city the torn tips of my boots grating against the corroding granite fashioned like a buckle over this section of planet; we paid no mind. 

His jowls were hanging loose even in bronze and on my way to the top platform I thought briefly back to DJ Gonzo at Pacha who’s set was actually pretty decent recent music mixed in nicely with the Ibiza sounds of yesteryear I went to the second floor to the top tier to the bridge of glass walls and chesterfield doors and saw the roaring people passing looking like locusts that were soon to be lambasted Loca People playing loud these people strutting their stuff proudly but despite the labels and the lifting miniskirts and the unbuttoned shirts and the lights the sight was dull cultureless vultures vying together on the dance floor and over Zippos outside and neon fish bowls like scavengers hollowing a gazelle into a hide turning the herbivore into horror taking her core out by the beak-full until nothing remains but her skin and her stains on their claws and the bits stuck between bleached teeth lurking in their sculpted jaws. I looked down and saw the quaking crowds in strobe light alcoves defined by ropes it’s hard to cope with anything when looking at people with everything waste it all and in the glass wall at the breakdown of sound the lights changed in range and tone from reds and greens to whites and blues and in the brightest of hues they disappeared from site and were replaced by myself staring down at all that surrounded and me. It dawned that there was nothing to see. Not really.

Nelson and the site at the square however were enough more than maybe as crazy at it sounds there was nothing exceptional about the view two musty buses and a staccato flow of traffic and black tarmac between the whites of the midrise Victorian and Edwardian buildings with the moonlight’s gilding for decoration we’re a nation of people in the dark until they see this side of the cityscape some rooms off some rooms on it looked like masking tape had been draped across the buildings’ faces in perfectly random places. Nelson never tires of this hence the mirth on his mouth this is a victor's view in its truest form just as stunning in a different way to this lawn at this sunrise. We went no further south than there and took the bus home and heard these teenagers ranting about race and the murders in Woolwich digging a big hole for themselves in my book talking about it as a travesty with undoubtedly it was because all death is tragic who wouldn’t weep at the idea that the magic of thought is ending but the reason this conversation is trending at this moment on this bus is because it happened close to the home of these guys covered in the paste of a foam party show-offs with nothing to show that know nothing blowing suds onto the windows and writing messages Gillette got to block the stars in the night from my eyes tonight.

“Tony was here”

Whatever, it’ll be rubbed away soon like it was never there.

We got off the bus with a couple of cusses as my foot hit the crust of the curb with a crack it was cold but there was a crisp cobalt sky starting out at 4 roaring colour around the mint green of the small clock tower on Woodhouse Lane that stopped working long ago at a time; I found it hard to read; we got back to my mates and watched documentaries on nearly mute we saw some menacing monologues this Northern glory hog his mog covered in mattered beard he’s good but I don’t know why he’s revered as much as he is but he’s good enough to enjoy when behind a rizzla packed with the nicest of vices the device flickers in front of me in 1080 Dee-Pee depicting a sisa man fanning his light bulb bowl with a paper to get his crack coals glowing in Athens with the smoke growing in the pipe and the black tripe forming around the cream of the rock I think of glaciers melting in the Artic the interviewee tells me through the camera the recent rise in drugs is because of flailing market but sadly this is the only sense his mouth dispenses between his bouts of hopping fences and fending off the mobs of men that function as death squads behind closed doors I’m sure. The laptop ran out of battery but to be honest that didn’t matter to me because I wanted to go out on the balcony to see the canopy of sunrise roll out to be honest I was getting sick of Youtube advertising which has been rising in its frequency for a while now as if I want to see some boardroom of bile bound men using sex appeal and slogans tout their wares. Since there was no balcony the rooftop had to do so we climbed through the window and sat on the slats of rooftop to mop the disgrace of the club and the majority of the places we saw tonight from our minds.

It did and now I’m rid of it all.   

It’s all done it’s all passed and it was worth it because at last I get a second chance for a better view the blue of the grass and the green of the blue bells and the writhing red of the trees and the indigo of the iris and the violet of the roses in their naturally striking poses I got those colours mixed up I suppose but it doesn’t matter because they’re merging together and the beauty of their combination through my widened eyes makes the sight even better the petals are wet the scene feels set in the glow of the sun soon to run away perhaps but at least it has wrapped its hand around the garden to soften my hardened heart concreted by defeated notions and bitter emotions about my loss of Romantic ideals I feel the colour, particularly the teal, it feels healing what I thought were bodies in the shadow of the willow are now peeling back to reveal what they really were just Willow’s leaves in lustrous locks stirring in the breeze. I think of the nature of mothers and think of the sun as the offspring of a mother and her lover estranged loneliness made the Mother mangy it wasn’t our building or our actions that made her eyes hazy with tears entirely it was the years of constantly piling fear that she would never see her sun who’s come back to cast his shroud but at the same time lift hers but nerves will get the better of him soon and his hand will retract and the black and the grey and the gloom will return. I don’t know when he’ll come around again, but I hope he stays for breakfast next time I hope he can last longer I hope his will gets stronger. And I hope I’m here to steer my eyes towards the reunion and their fusion. One day, one day, I pray he stays so that I may witness the rays Romantically again.