Life and Death and Everything in Between

Part One – STORM

Porktraddle (singing and playing his old oil-tin ukulele)

It seems like only yesterday
We wandered in the field of fantasy.
Crushed beneath our happy feet
The meadow grass that smelled so sweet…
Whoops! Pardon! Whoops! Better out than in!

Poet:
All that summer there had been a nagging, fretting wind
So that, even on the clearest days, visitors on the beach had huddled behind wind breaks
And left early because of the fine sand
That rasped and scarified bare burnt skin
While the anxious surf sucked and sighed.

In a tumbling tin shed in the corner of a field above the dunes,
Beneath the crackling humming pylons
Buried behind barbed wire and brambles
Beset by gulls by day and owls by night
Eamon Porktraddle wrestles with a bigger problem
Driven mad by the broken ring pull on his last can of Special Brew
Driven mad by the electricity in the air and the corrugated banging in the wind
Driven into darkness by the pictures he is seeing in his head
Driven into darkness by the visions he is seeing on the screen in front of him:
Dreams of life and death
And everything in between
Something just out of reach
Like the Special Brew inside its can
Something is fundamentally worng

Porktraddle:
Bloody bastards, bloody can.
Bloody Gulls and bloody owls,
Bloody sheets and bloody towels
Bloody spades and bloody trowels
Newton Einstein Heisenberg Heineken
Newton Heineken Heisenberg Einstein
Heineken Heisenberg Einstein Newton
Heineken Brexit Trump and Putin

Poet:
This is the planet Kyarra where the voices of the mermaids sing to him when he can’t sleep
Mermaids:
Papa November, Papa November, Papa November…
Poet:
From this distant place he looks down on the whole of the universe and spies the tiny glow of the third planet circling an insignificant star in the remotest galaxy.
He watches horrified by the seven and a quarter billion that inhabit that place
Porktraddle:
I can see you. I can see what you’re up to.
Poet:
Even from up here a foetid stink fills his nostrils making him gag and retch.
He cannot decide whether it is him or them.
The owls, the gulls or the stinky billions
Is it Jeyes fluid and pine mountain fresh lavatory cleaner
Or the warm pustulence of his crawling underarm lice pits.

Porktraddle:
I smell.
Poet:
He smells Fear filling the air with its rank stench.
Fear crackles and sparks with an unearthly blue glow.
Fear of failure, fear of stuff, fear of washing machines, and fridges and Breville sandwich makers.
Fear of Dyson vacuum cleaners.
He hears people crying. They fear death with no-one at their bedside.
They fear fire and thought and hope and dreams.
They fear the darkness at night and the sunlight at dawn.
They fear themselves and they fear other people.

They fear inadequacy and knowledge.
They fear the past and their trivial misdemeanours, misjudgements and debts that might catch up with them one day.
They fear the future with its tumbling into chaos
They fear now because it is neither the future not the past
And they are giddy with the nowness
They fear knowledge.
They fear truth.
They fear reality.
They fear the blame that is accruing to them for their inadequacies.
Most of all they fear emptiness.
They are terrified of silence, of loss.

He listens to the seven odd stinky billion that inhabit the planet.

Porktraddle:
I can hear you.
Poet:
And the Seven and a quarter billion said:
The Seven and a Quarter Odd Stinky Billion:
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Give us this day our daily bread
We’re a short time living and a long time dead

When we were at school, we were all mislead
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
We were told in school
To believe in Newton
And The whole of infinite universe of time and space will be predictable
We can live our life on rails
And sigh with pleasure at the end
A job well done.
But chaos theory, string theory, membranes
Throw up walls, gates, barbed wire entanglements
We are in the control of forces entirely outside our comprehension.
The equations no longer make any sense and nobody know what we’re meant to do about it.
When we were at school, we were all mislead
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Poet:
Truth is now an elastic membrane that stretches and reforms
Porktraddle extends his finger and aims at the people one by one.
Porktraddle:
“They cried to me in their hour of need and I did not answer them.” She took all the money and the kids. She took the house, left me on the skids. Listen to me: There are no owls. There are no owls
I’ll put you all out of your misery. I ought to. That would be kindest.
Mermaids:
Papa November, Papa November, Papa November…
Poet:
The world he knows is slipping away from its inhabitants.
There is one last assay to be carried out. One last test of himself and the Universe. One more sacrifice
Porktraddle:
If only I could think what it is
Poet:
If only he could drown out the voices of the mermaids.
Poet:
He can see the pullulating mass of rottenness
That promises to burst through at any moment
Porktraddle retches and gags
And at last, he finds a screwdriver to open the can and he can sleep soundly.

Porktraddle:
Oh fuck. It’s gone all over me.

Part 2 – BEACH

Porktraddle (singing to himself)
……….. fascination
But everything decays these days
And, falling earthwards in a daze,
We see our lives as through a haze,
Crawling with the worms of putrefaction

Whoops! Pardon. Whoops. Better out than in!
Poet:
On this, the last dawn of summer the air is calm and still.
A chill in the air says that nothing lasts forever.
Porktraddle:
Over there, those tattered tents
The circus of half-baked intents
Containing the deranged laments
Of doubt and hesitation
The limping lions of lunacy
Have not divined that they are free
Cowed by the withering whips of literality
Wielded by the clowns of desensitisation

Poet:
The world changes, stretches, twists.
Mermaids cling to his arms with icy fingers.
Mermaids:
Come swim with us. Swim with us. Swim with us. Come on in. You know you want to.
Porktraddle:
Leave me be.
Poet:
He feels the warmth drain from him
He shakes them off like a couple of toddlers.
Porktraddle:
Leave me be. I’ve got work to do.
Poet:
Minute by minute a foggy greyness creeps up upon the land.
The sea is oystershell grey and mother of pearl smooth
and rustles slightly like the plastic bags he carries in one hand.
The bags will soon be full of…

Porktraddle:
Look, see. Empty ice cream tubs, cola cans, plastic glasses, condoms
Not used, thank God
Poet:
And he thinks:
Somewhere a clock is ticking.
Mermaids:
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Porktraddle:
Here who are you keep telling me what I think? I got enough going on as it is.
Poet:
Come on Porkers, you can do this
Porktraddle:
And don’t keep telling me what to do I could go on strike. Who are you, anyway?
Get out of my head.
Poet:
Come on. You know it’s all in there.
Porktraddle:
I’m not listening.

Poet:
Porktraddle continues his work
Picking up the dew-sodden paper plates
And sauce-smeared tinfoil of last night’s blaring beach barbecue

Mermaids:
Come swim with us. Swim with us. Swim with us. Come on in. You know you want to.

Porktraddle:

I’m not listening.
Poet:
Porktraddle tries to combat the chaos.
To push entropy away into the dunes
To return everything to its pristine newness for the new day.

Sometimes he comes across the personal props that the holidaymakers have dropped.

Porktraddle:
A half full bottle of sun-tan lotion, a pair of sun-glasses,
a book as fat as an airport terminal, or a toddler’s pebbledashed beach shoe.

Poet:
Sometimes he finds a bottle of something left over from the party. With the cork still in.
But today he is disappointed.

Porktraddle
You’re doing it again. Filling my head up. There isn’t any more room in there. Not more disappointment. Not with those blinking mermaids and the memories.
Poet:
Today there is merely a cheese sandwich still sealed tight in its wrapper.
Porktraddle:
I can fucking see that. I’m not stupid. I’m going for a paddle.
Poet:
He kicks off one of his old worn sandals and clad only in his baggy green shorts he wades knee deep into the surf. It is champagne cold although it is many years since he has sampled well-chilled champagne. The surf does not know he is here every morning rain or shine. Hail or snow or gale and late winter have not prevented him.
The mermaids sing to him from the surf. They are singing of sadness and disappointment and a universe not complete.
Mermaids:
Six, seven, eight, nine. Six, seven, eight, nine. Six, seven, eight, nine.
Porktraddle:
For Christ’s sake. Clear off.
Poet:
He bangs his head with his fist trying to block out their voices and folds the tin foil plate around his head.
Porktraddle:
Not yet. Not yet.
Someone will always have to clear away the dreams.
Poet:
He wanders back to where his sandal is lying.
The mermaids sink out of sight beneath the waves.
Porktraddle turns the sandwich over in his hands.

Part 3 – SANDWICH

Poet:
Porktraddle. Give me an opinion on this sandwich:
Porktraddle:
I know this. Used to know this…
The formula for cheese is:
Emmenthal E
Is made from Milk M
Expressed as Curds of Casein – C squared.
E = MC²
Poet:
By an extraordinary quirk of coincidence, E=MC² is also a formula worked out by one Albert Einstein to show the equivalence of Energy and Mass
Mermaids:
Sieben, neun, sechs, acht Sieben, neun, sechs, acht Sieben, neun, sechs, acht Sieben neun sechs acht
Poet:
So following Einstein’s formula, this gram of cheese is equivalent to the following amounts of energy: twenty-four point nine million kilowatt-hours. Enough for a Breville sandwich maker to make…
Porktraddle:
Three hundred million toasted sandwiches. At a value of…
Poet:
Three million four hundred and thirty-six thousand two hundred pounds
Porktraddle:
Twenty-one point five kilotons…
Poet:
That’s thousands of tons
of TNT-equivalent energy.
Roughly the size of the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki

Porktraddle:
So, this cheese sandwich can be said to be equivalent to between thirty-nine and eighty thousand human beings.
Poet:
Mr Porktraddle. Mr Porktraddle. Room Nine, please.
Porktraddle:
“Where did they all go?”
Poet:
Porktraddle’s finger hovers over the button
Porktraddle:
Not yet. Not yet.

Poet:
Mr Porktraddle. Room Nine. Urgent.

Mermaids:
Note that no net mass or energy is really created or lost. Mass/energy simply moves from one place to another. This is merely an example of the transfer of energy and mass in accordance with the principle of mass–energy conservation. No responsibility can be taken for the destruction of the world by nuclear annihilation.

Poet:
Attention! Room Nine is now critical.

Part 4 – HOPE

Dee:
Good morning, Sun
Poet:
Dee, who owns the café on the corner of the bay
Is rolling up the shutters
And with a mop and bucket
Is sluicing down the pavement.
Dee wrings the mop by leaning on it
Her attention is caught
By the intricate endless patterns
Of whorls and spirals
Purple blue and grey
That every single paving stone reveals.
A thousand, thousand once living creatures
Compressed in every slab
Under countless unheeding feet
As the soapy water drains away.

The Town Crier:

Gloria in Excelsis!

Poet:

Gloria, the town Mayor rises like the sun in her apartment above the Square. Clad only in her magnificence she enters her polished marble and chrome bathroom and haloed by unguents and sweet wafts of oriental mysteries she pauses by the window and gazes with steely benevolence on her domain.

Porktraddle

Whoops! Pardon! Whoops! Beter out than in!
Poet:
She shudders as she spies Porktraddle at work on the beach. She sniffs as she observes Dee leaning on her mop. But then her attention is caught by the sight, by the first two visitors walk through the still echoing streets of the town. A young man and a young woman with hair as skimble-skamble as the blackberry bush they slept under. Medical students,
Gloria:
Our hope for the future. They may wear old jeans and torn jumpers and carry backpacks from which hang a mess of coloured ropes and clips and karabiners and nuts on wires. But they are accumulating days and weeks of life. Soon they will be replete. Building up. Becoming useful. Not like some I could mention.
Poet:
They turn away from the beach and head up the hill towards the cliffs. They are going to climb down the v. Diff Mama’s Big One to the sea and then back up the Double Krustyburger v. Severe before having lunch near the lighthouse and spend the afternoon sunning themselves on the rabbit cropped, dropping dropped, scuffed thrift watching the far blue horizon.
Gloria:
They are all hope and longing. Soon, we will draw them in. Draw them to us. We will screw them tight to us. Building the future. Their future. Our future.
Poet:
But they are completely unaware of anything outside this moment. This here and now and the morning and the apricot sun and the pale blue sky and their expectation of danger and love.

Poet:
They do not see the lone figure of the elderly gentleman in baggy green shorts and sandals holding the lives of eighty thousand souls in his hand. Their vision of the future extends no further than the cliffs and the coming excitement. Porktraddle points to them, finger extended like a gun.
He wants to warn them of what might come. They do not hear his rattling cry or see his pointing finger.
For them, this is the moment of zen perfection.

Part 5 – KITTY