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Feral: A Chiltern's Country Diary


May

This early spring overeagre puppy anxious to please our masters and so digusts them with its lack of subtlety and blatant show of fawning ambition.

Hey fucker, the blossom has now all but fallen from the what trees do you call them yes trees and bushes and hedgerows. It says here there is a surfeit of petals strewn across the land. Loiters in corners chased there by the wind where it rots down.

The scent at first and ought to be overwhelming and heady. Narcotic bliss of excess but somehow the smell has come out queer and as the cells degenerate in the unseasonal heat a meaty stench hangs above everythingthing.

A miasma of dysfunction and neglect.

I realise that nature is the greatest waster of resources. Soil is just landfill by another name.

Two wood pigeons' banter becomes conflict and the wing of one is broken. The other mounts and rapes it as it rattles. Then scarpers. I approach with caution and snap it's the remaining neck.

Heavy and hot it is to the touch in death. I hold it to my face. Bead of blood from the airhole in its beak. Wch I drnk dwn. Bag that for later.

Jaundiced blossom with browning lips clogging up the verges traversing the fields snagging in the undergrowth at the forest edge. I reach down and pull up hand after hand of the stuff fulls and try to fashion some use for it. Kindling or bedding of some order.

Oh but it is shabby, ill formed shit. Even now as I take grasp of it it is sludging through my fingers and oozing on my wrist in a manner I do not like or appreciate everso much. Big yuk.

If I had a brush but those days of order imposition are what I left behind when I chose to to live this other that. To leave behind in the boot of the car along with my misdemeanours guilt and secrets.

Flowers are not secretive. These plants have it all on show. They have no shame. Stink of their random and statistically ludicrous sex never leaves my hair for days.

One day on the hunt for baby rabbit tired I stumble into a hollow that has welled up with the dusky blooms of chestnut trees. Several feet deep I am banjaxed by it. Like an assualt. Forces it into my mouth. Makes me gag on it / Gags me make on it. Smeared on my face and across my breasts. Great gobs of the suff overflowing my lips and viscous on my chin. Rubbed into my hair and beard. Presses its spore on me, over me. I struggle but with a grim pleasure. The scent is feral and awful but also awe inspiring. In almost getting to like it I see myself as if from the outside, naked rolled in a cheap moist confetti that Colin got knock-off from the cashncarry flood damage sale.

In dis-gust I claw myself free from it and lie out in the sun for ever so long to burn the flecks dry. Dusted myself down saying no harm done. How I am a liar. Soon all will be green again and the ground will forget.

The whole world is throwing away its seed in millions
But I hold steady to the three in my palm
And let the rest disseminate into a midden a trash.
It starts to rain and does not let up for days
Carpet of flower becoming grey and mushy
Like someone kicked a massive brain to pulp
And chucked it down here from their vantage point of absolute power.

Naturally I trudge it wet and weary
I feel sorry for myself for
I am as but one seed
If language disregards this multitude of potential
Sorry I meant if weather disregards this multitude of potential
Then what good and what chance do I?

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