|
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 113
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 6:03 pm: | 
|
Thanks, AP!
I'd like to know which journalist fictionalises the TV listings - none of the programmes start on time.
I would like to get back to Jack with my next one, but I will await your salvo first.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 221
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 - 1:09 pm: |
|
Robert
might be a long time coming.
I done run out of Spanish brandy! |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 115
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 - 2:06 pm: |
|
AP, I'm fuelled by tea and cigarettes. I'm OK for those, so if I can develop either of the preliminary ideas I have, I'll post it.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 236
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 1:34 pm: |
|
Profiler’s Paradise
‘Please Professori Gallop can you not help us find this Jack we seek?’
‘I’ll do my best but it will cost your vest and might take me all week.
Hum… now let me see, what sort of fellow this might be?
He’ll have two legs and probably two arms to boot,
Be neither tall, nor small and most likely to wear suit.
He appears quite bold, so won’t be old, perhaps in prime of life,
Certainly not married, perhaps single but I suppose might have wife.
Now, he’ll be left-handed that I know
But may have used right to strike killing blow.
He’ll live in an abode of some kind
Probably a house I think you’ll find.
He’s the sort of person if you please
Who wipes his nose after a sneeze.
Ten fingers he’ll have and a few toes
And a door through which he comes and goes.
He’ll certainly walk the street
And would probably use his feet.
Though he may take to wheel
To escape pursuit I feel.
Yet again the chap may take flight…
One of these will be absolutely right.
Most likely he is in full-time employment
But may not work simply from enjoyment.
His family may know him quite well
And he’ll have parents I can surely tell.
He might just have children of his own
But could be living quite alone.
A man that is familiar to the blade,
Probably in Sheffield made.
He will have experience in the meat trade,
And of slaughter
So might be market porter.
He is Russian, when not Prussian,
And will have white to brown skin,
And could be fat or could be thin.
He may cobble shoes together
And these shoes will be made of leather.
When not shoe maker
He might be Jewish baker,
Or Polish packing case maker.
Or what about a clerk employed in the tea trade?
There! I have finally an excellent decision made.
He was a doctor of course
Who came and went by horse.
He will have once been a child and wet the bed,
Like many children he will have been fed
On bread.
It will have taken him a year to learn to walk
And perhaps three of four before he could talk.
I maybe that he had a headache at some time in his life,
And when you find his house, inside will be a knife.
Also at some stage in life a book he will have read,
And at night I do deduce he will sleep in a bed.
There will be a table which means he will have chairs,
And if house has two floors there you will find stairs.
Now to the main filler
Psychology of killer.
He will have saddle burns on his rear
And walk bow legged I fear.
If not already completely and utterly dead
You will find large carbuncle on his head.
He will walk backwards except when he is walking backwards and then he will be walking forwards but will look over his shoulder to see if he is following himself.
Now, there you have it
A perfect fit.
So now I’ve handed over the brute
I’ll thank you kindly for me loot.
I’m no jolly folly or fool,
For I’m off to give lecture in Liverpool.
|
Marie Finlay
Inspector
Username: Marie
Post Number: 229
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 2:17 pm: |
|
Maura: I'm sorry I didn't spot your post before!
Excellent. Five stars. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 132
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 3:07 pm: |
|
AP and Maura : two extremely clever and funny poems! It's great to see the old poetry Board up and running again.
Here's one I wrote a couple of days ago. The shade of Jack (not necessarily as I see him) returns to chat to a Ripperologist. Apologies to Ripperologists everywhere.
PUTTING HIM RIGHT
JACK : I was on time.
RIPPEROLOGIST : No, you were late.
JACK : I slaughtered nine.
RIPPEROLOGIST : You slaughtered eight.
JACK : Ah yes, I remember it well.
JACK : I was quite short.
RIPPEROLOGIST : You were quite tall.
JACK : I planned and thought.
RIPPEROLOGIST : You were a fool!
JACK : Ah yes, I remember it well.
JACK : I had a doctor's skill,
I scrawled a note in chalk,
I simply had to kill -
RIPPEROLOGIST : What nonsense you do talk!
JACK : It was so sad,
Such things to do,
I feel so bad -
RIPPEROLOGIST : It wasn't YOU!
JACK : Ah yes....I remember it well.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 237
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 3:26 pm: |
|
Maura
I know you from your poetry.
Enjoyed it.
Hope you packed a long knife and some crystal when you came over here |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 238
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 4:43 pm: |
|
Robert
I thought 'putting him right' a real spanker of a poem, and you used the medium in exactly the way that I like to see the medium used. Sort of a surreal connection between then and now, and within your poem, all the self satisfied nonsense that plagues us now and probably plagued us then. Your words were brief but they make one think a lot, about entrenchment, possession of phantom facts and our dream time intepretations of Whitechapel nights.
So thank you for an inspired piece of work. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 133
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 17, 2003 - 5:01 pm: |
|
Thanks for saying that, AP. As I said, I think yours is tremendous - especially the bit about his checking to see if he is following himself!
At the moment I'm trying to do one with a religious maniac Jack. The trouble is, he keeps sounding a bit like an Old Testament prophet. But then maybe that's the way he would have been supposed to sound.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 239
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 12:36 pm: |
|
Aye
Morag I wonder from what clammy hole
Did crawl your immortal and clever soul?
With what dread you write, pure cowpat
Or powerful insight?
Be you the black soul of dread Bob Marley thing?
For very much like him you do dread lock sing.
Ah Morag Maura, I know thee too well,
With dragon’s breath foul from hell.
From what foul deed or dare
And from what rotten nest or lair
Creep you here with comely wench
That does reek of slime and stench?
What cavernous great whore’s blade
Swing you from devil’s material made?
You be like Jack I’ll be bound
When final solution is finally found.
|
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 240
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 12:41 pm: |
|
‘Mote in Jack’s eye.’
And when that dread black crow did flap
It did bring me soul of Jack,
And with what trembling beat of wing
Did it dread song begin to sing.
It sang of gutless guts and gritty grime as it picked crippled path through blood and slime, and then when I scream in dream…
In silence of violence, it left my side, and more beside.
And though bereft I heard echo that was left, a faint chant as if behind a wall, something buried deep within the soil…
Jack speak:
Whore’s door was open so let meself in, warn’t ginger beer she were soaked in gin, and the final arrow in me quiver were a mirror, did quite make me shiver, a final reflection of me eternal protection…
Through smoke and mirror does dread jack slither,
Picking at the carrion flies your raven, in the pits of whores be his haven.
‘Tis but cripples game to name the name where vain seek fame.
I don’t know why but methinks jack were magpie
With sly hop here and sly hop there
Black and white minstrel without due care.
Craven raven or carrion crow?
That did strike such deadly blow,
And rage upon that worm in bud
Afore burying it in crude and crud.
For Jack lay down in devil’s bed
And then devil spoke inside his head:
‘See this fine bedded and wedded whore I lay?
She be packed full of sin and rotten with decay.
You must not reason or question why
But must cast out this mote in great god’s eye.
You must cause the ‘unfortunate’ unfortunate pain
And stab it to the quick again and again.
For when you have slashed
And slaughtered this worm in the bud,
Then you will come to me as
The true brethren of my blood.
You shall be my son
And the saviour of all mankind
If you can but spear the worm
That be buried deep inside…
The bud.
Brethren of my blood.’
|
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 137
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 4:18 pm: |
|
Crumbs, you're going it, aren't you AP?
Fantastic stuff - especially 'Mote in Jack's eye'.
The beginning was fascinating, and I loved the whole bird concept, particularly the magpie.'Spear the worm' was very clever, and the religious dimension very powerful.
Maura's Poe poem seems to have disappeared! Where's it gone?
My religious maniac is coming along. The poor man's going quite berserk. I think I'll have to hand him in soon, before he has a heart attack.
Robert
|
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 241
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 4:59 pm: |
|
Thanks Robert
Perhaps Morag's Poe poem was copyright issue?
I know that some years ago I quoted a tiny bit of winnie the pooh in one of my books and up from the grave came all these folk with copyright issue and made me pay sorely for the pleasure. They were all over a hundred and shouldn't have been alive.
Don't give your religious maniac in until he has sinned, that's when you got him.
|
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 169
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 5:20 pm: |
|
Hi all
Really enjoying the poetic offerings on this thread! For what it's worth here goes:-
Some time back I write a "prose poem" about Jack which turned into a one man play which has been performed once at a local theatre.
Thought some might like a taste of it. this is from the opening:
"Dark streets, darker than the depths of your imagination. Squalid, shabby streets. Dregs of humankind. Animal voices in the dark -sounds of lust, syllables of unspent desire. Violation, there in the lightless alleyways. Rape by mutual consent between two unwashed bodies that have no other name for love. They do not need your pity - they have no use for your concern. You are nothing to them. Be still - be calm. You do not belong here. You can do nothing.
I know how much you need it. I know your need to belong, to feel useful. But this is not the place. This is not your place. You are too... caring, too... feeling. So, go home. Go to your cosy little homes and leave us that belong here alone. We have so little -would you take even that from us? Our pride?
What are we to you? Why do you come here and point and stare at us like tired, mangy animals that pace an endless treadmill in a filthy cage? Do our delicate aromas offend you? Do our lust and our anger excite you? Or do you come so that you can go back sweetly to your nice little homes and congratulate yourselves and puff up in the impotence of your own self-importance and smug self satisfaction that you are not like us? But where do you belong?
There is a monster who haunts my dreams - a creature of smoke and shadow and blood. Sometimes he has my face - sometimes he has your face - but when I steel myself to turn and look into the eyes that brand the flaying heat into me, he has no face. He is my dream weaver and in the warp and the weft of his fingers I am his slave and his dearest apostle. The very first night he came to me I did not know him and I denied him. But he will not be denied, he will not be ignored. Oh, I remember it so well that even the faint and feeble memory of it sears my blood with its fingertips. I dreamed of the wings of darkness that folded their hooked and leathery skin about me like a living shroud. Slow was the beat of the nighted blood that bunched and oozed its serpentine, slithering course along those knotted and purple veins. What would you have done? Panicked? Screamed? Wept? Shouted? Crapped? Who would not? But I knew in the first silken touch of that warm, smooth, sensuous hand that their dark, cracked talons would never tear my flesh. Even had I wanted them to... A slow and silent sound crept so gradually into my sleeping ear. His voice - his wondrous, dreadful voice that could lull an angel to sleep, that could pierce and mortify the soul of a demon. His first words - so soft, so gentle - lingered in the twisting chambers of my ear like the holiest of hymns twining the heights of the loftiest cathedral."
Just a taste - the whole things runs to about 45 mins on stage!!! So I wont be posting all of it!
But I hope some may find it of interest
Regards
Chris
|
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 243
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 5:43 pm: |
|
Chris
very dark and very enjoyable, you mix love, lust and murder like a bar of chocolate.
You're not a mummer by any chance are you?
This sounds like the street plays the mummers used to do in Victorian times.
Mummers were street musicians and poets in the tradition of Morris dancing and are thought to represent the oldest form of stage play in the world.
This is much in their style.
45 minutes? Bring it on. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 138
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 6:03 pm: |
|
Hi Chris
I thought that was rather stunning! I was really into it, I was riding along with it...and then it stopped! As AP said, let's have some more. Plus, it looks ideal for the Ripper centre being discussed above.
Robert
|
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 170
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 6:41 pm: |
|
Coo- good reviews!!!
Pt 2:
"You have always known that I would come to you. In the dark and dreadful pit of your soul, you knew it. Didn't you?"
I did not tremble. I did not fear. No.. .I wept. I wept the tears of belonging. He wanted me. No-one else, only me.
"I have always known," I said. "I have always hoped."
His hands that had been wings slowly lingered over all my body as though he would know every part of me.
"I have chosen well," he purred. "Do you know what it is that I want of you?"
I had no answer. I did not care. I belonged.
"Men have known my deeds," he whispered. "The words of blood that I slashed across their faces have been been read my many. But none has understood. You will. I will show you my mind. I will come to you when the darkest hour of night breathes its final gasp. I will show you the hellish delights that are in my head. Be ready, little brother, be ready for the touch of my breath in the night." And he was gone...
PAUSE
It wasn't my fault! I didn't hold out my arms in the silence of the night and beg him to come to me and take possession of me. I didn't conjure him up out of the bleakness of my own soul and give him a name to comfort my own emptiness and despair I did not invent him for my own pleasure! So why do you blame me? If some mindless thug raped your wife or your sister or your lover, who would you blame? The rapist.. or the victim? So why do you blame me? Do you know - really know - what loneliness is? Have you really known a night so long that you thought that God had forgotten the dawn? An endless, seamless succession of hours when sleep is impossible and every flicker of thought turns to the dry aridity that you carry inside you? Unless you have felt that, you cannot know what he meant to me and why I welcomed his soft touch and his icy words.
PAUSE
You know the meaning of comfort, don't you? And civilisation and law and propriety and all the other scales that you try vainly to glue over the cracks to hide the animal nesting inside of you... but I have seen the beast in its lair. I have smelt its foetid breath and tasted its rancid sweat and savoured its unholy blood. Don't blame me! I don't need your praise but I will not tolerate your blame. You have no right, not here... this place is mine.
PAUSE
Can't we be friends, you and me? You want to hear what I have to tell.. and I want, I need, I must.. (SHOUTS) What do you want from me? Please. - please.. you have to believe that I never wanted any of this to happen and that it was none of my doing but I was being controlled by him, he had possession of me and my mind and my will were in his dark hands and this foul, oozing madness that he planted in me like the twisted, blighted seed of some fleshy and pestilential plant that grew and festered inside me, this grinning and gibbering insanity clawed and raked at me with poisoned nails and glistening fangs...
PAUSE
You almost believed me, didn't you? You must be careful of that, I will use you as he used me. I will.
PAUSE
So, you're there and I'm here. What now? Have you come to see me? Are you interested in me? Are you concerned about me? Do you give a toss about me? No, you don't, do you? Well. my dear little friends, I am going to tell you anyway. Do you know what I like? I like games.. I like to play. Do you like to play? Because you're going to whether you like it or not. Have you ever played the silence game? No? It's very simple. Deceptively simple. The idea is, you see, that we are all afraid of what's in here - we are all terrified of the hollowness and the sterility that echoes inside us like a room where someone has died. That is why silence unnerves us. All the chatter and the drivel you come out with, they cover up the silence of your own core. The game is.. who can stand the silence the longer? Me or you? Let's try it...
VERY LONG PAUSE
(SHOUTS) Silence! Listen to it! He only came to me when the silence was absolute, not a breath, not a murmur. At first, I did not know whether he came to me in my dreams and the fevered writhings of my own soul had conjured his faceless presence or whether he came to me in the waking hours of my soundless vigil. But it did not matter. All that mattered was that he did come. I did not know dream from waking and I cared even less.
Oh listen - the keening wail of a whipped dog.. the muffled scuff of a threadbare shoe on slimy, moon-gleaming cobbles.. the hiss of fear in the dark.. the miserable stinking gutter of a lightless street.. he was there, behind me, urging me, willing me on, his mind surging with the strength of a thousand years of sin...
A shape...
A hunch of blackness in the gloom...
I touched it... it was warm... it was soft, yielding... it was dead.
"Look at her" he sighed. "look closely and carefully. Study her." A plain, unremarkable woman.. her flesh ice to the eye but still blood-warm to the touch... her lank hair matted, greasy... Tarred rope twisted there on the pavement...
"Her eyes," he breathed. "Look into her eyes."
They were open - staring, focussed on eternity.
(SHOUTS) She looked through me... she would not look at me. I cradled her head but she would not focus her lifeless eyes upon me. But she would believe in me, she would acknowledge me, she would know my power.
"You will never see me, little brother," he said. "You will never look into my eyes. But in her emptiness there is some measure of what I am."
"There is only emptiness."
"Oh no," his voice smiled. "In that void you will find the seeds of what is in me."
"And what is that?"
"What do you see?"
"Hate?"
"No, no, no, my friend. Hate? Could I hate what I do not know?"
"But you must hate.. or why would you kill?"
"Look at your hands...look at her."
|
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 171
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2003 - 6:49 pm: |
|
Hiya
I don't want to clog up or monopolise this thread so if anyone wants the complete scripe mail me and I will send
Regards
Chris S |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 244
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 4:03 am: |
|
Chris
clog and monopolise away!
Truly execllent piece of writing, who would have thought you had this other side to your multi talents?
For me personally the length of your posts are just right, any more would be too much to take in at a single reading, any less would not be enough, so I'd be quite happy to see the rest appearing thus in episodic fashion. But that's just me, perhaps others don't agree.
I can see I am going to have to sharpen and hone me own blade to finer cutting edge with the talent that is popping up on this board.
I particular enjoy your dialogue - I know to my own cost this is never easy to write and keep true - and the way it seems to join two disparate entities, although maybe they be one and the same individual enjoying their paranoid schizophrenia together?
Don't know. Must read again. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 140
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 7:08 am: |
|
Hi Chris
Yes, if you could post it all, in manageable chunks, that would be great. "Room where someone has died" was brilliant!
I tell you what, Chris, all this is a helluva lot more poetic than those census poems you keep knocking up!
Please keep posting!
Robert |
Marie Finlay
Inspector
Username: Marie
Post Number: 232
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 7:13 am: |
|
Chris, fantastic!
I'd love to read the rest, please do post. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 141
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 7:59 am: |
|
Hi all
Well, here is my ranting Ripper.
MANIA
I walk in the streets, and behold! I see them.
I close my eyes, and lo! they are there.
Woe unto you, ye whores and harlots!
The warm sun shivers to look upon you,
The moon fain would turn her blind face unto you.
Woe unto you, taloned tearers of souls,
Snatching husband from wife, clawing son from the home.
Your debaucheries empty the hats of the beggars,
The child of the workman must hunger for bread.
Woe unto you, ye ants and termites!
I will stir your nests, I will make you scurry!
No crack shall conceal, no cranny shall shelter!
My knife knows your corners, it spies out your nooks,
It uncovers your sin, it cries your crimes,
Yea, it cries unto Heaven itself.
For the Lord my God doth sharpen my blade,
I tread His track, I walk in His ways,
For I, Jack, am His chosen beloved.
He has forgiven my lust and reclaimed me,
The heat of the harlot shall not sear my loins.
Nor shall my soul hasten panting to hellfire,
For He has vouchsafed me His peace everlasting.
He ransomed my soul from whores' palace of gin
With its sweats and its nightmares and dry-mouthed distempers.
I anguished for infamies only imagined,
While sin lived within me unheeded as heartbeat.
Behold, ye whores! My hand trembles not.
Harken, ye harlots! My eyes are wide open.
Woe unto you, ye destroyers of life!
I will rouge your cheeks with the blood of your bowels,
I will jewel your necks with gems of gore.
I will cast out your wombs - they shall not bear fruit
From the staggering stranger's casual coin.
Your courts I will cleanse, your alleys and yards,
Your holes of hell and your desolate middens,
Till Jerusalem gleams in the dawn of the day.
Then will my work be accomplished, and Jack
Shall rest from his Lord's lofty labour. Amen.
Robert
|
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 172
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 8:05 am: |
|
Hi folks - many thanks for all the great comments!!!
Part 3:
I still cradled her head like a solicitous lover. But as I spread my hands, her black blood scorched and channelled down my arms, coiled and clammered across me... her throat, ripped and ravaged, a dark and weeping mouth that would suck me into its raw and seeping entrails...I fell back from her and she slid gracefully aside like a boneless doll.
(SHOUTS)
"How could you do this without hate? You have taken her life - is that not enough? Why this desecration?"
He laughed...softly... Slowly.
"Desecration? Was she holy? Was her body a temple? You have seen so little and you understand even less. But you will. Oh yes, you will. No, the taking of life is not enough - it is never enough. I must destroy that which would destroy me. I must behead the dragon, I must rip out the glinting teeth from the mouth that would devour me until only the stunted, bleeding stumps remain. Under that pathetic and thread-worn dress that covered her, I have lopped the first head of the Hydra."
My hand edged forward...
"You don't need to look," he said. "Not yet. You are not ready. There will be other times. Be calm, be still..."
I was alone. Alone in my room - my tawdry, rat-eaten, crumbling room. Had I been there? Had I dreamt it? Had I seen it? The flaking filigree of caked blood on my hands told me that I had. I slept - and as I slept I did dream...
PAUSE
White.. white ruffled light.. .a gleaming, glinting crack in the floor of my unholy room....... a pavement of agony marbled with the blood of anonymous saints, martyred with the pregnant lust of a thousand unspent orgasms.. white seed of fear.. white fire of power.. but from that blinding crack there eased out - slow, so slow - fingers so long, impossibly long, no hand to join them. There are dark, arid splintered nails, brown blood caked beneath them... there are knuckles, pitted and scarred, bitten and calloused, rotted and limbless in the pitiless glare... I must close it. the crack will claw and cling to me.. will drag me in.. will drown me.. close, close, be not.. there is blood on me... it is not mine.. .I cannot be clean... I am diseased.. .I am filth.. the blood of birth and the waters of the womb have tainted me...I will drown in blood... I cannot breathe in the chamber of my mother's flesh.. .
I cannot cut this blue, knotted rope that ties me to her milky and sagging body.. teeth in the reddened, pulsing walls of my prison.. not fangs.. not sharp.. dull, edgeless spades that bruise and hammer at me... on my hands there is blood.. my blood, her blood, the blood of the mother of the world... I must get free... I must close the crack... I must seal off that room of spawn and lust that went into my making... she did that.. she did that to make me.. with him... lust made me, not love.. with him.. - I never knew him except when he spurted out his lust into her moist and secret chamber where I slept.. a toad. a fish, a deformed lizard, a shapeless and limbless mollusc. .I must close that crack of light and brightness.. .I must sever and tear out that blood-weeping room of shame...
PAUSE
You never wanted me, did you? Not me. Not me for myself. I was only an inconvenience, an unloved product of your lust. I was your shame made visible, that is why you treated me the way you did. But that was then.. when I was a helpless, loveless child that bawled out its impotence to the deafness of the night. I am not a child now. I will show you. .I will show all of you what I am now, what I have become, what you have made me. So don't blame me because the fault is yours and not mine. No, I am not a child and I am not friendless. He comes to me and his hatred for you and your kind makes the emptiness that resounds in side of me seem just the tinkling of a tiny, tuneless bell.
PAUSE
The waiting, that was the worst - not knowing if he would come or when. I was like a love-sick adolescent that moons and sulks for his impossible love that no-one in the world understands and about which no-one cares. I could not eat until the extremities of want prompted me. If I slept I dreamt only of him and the black unruffled silk that was his voice. Any noise in the silent hours of the night - however small, however slight - made my heart leap in expectation that he was there. But he was not.. not yet.
PAUSE
I know lots of games, you know. I like games, They make me happy. Games are important - they help us to get to know each other. And I want to know you...very, very well. I know that you came here to look at me but that does not mean that I can't look at you, does it? That's only fair. I might learn something. But if you see a scrawny animal in a cage, look deeply into his eyes and see if you can read what is there. I bet you can't. What would you say, then? Loneliness? A yearning for liberty? The gnawing need to feel the scouring wind of the plain or the musty breeze of the forest riffle and wrangle through his hair? Wrong! His only thought is what he would do to you if those bars or that pit were not there -his only wish is to use the strength and the weapons that his breeding gave him on those puny, white, little people who come to stare at him.
PAUSE
I should know - I am one of them. And these bars and this pit that keep me here and you there - how strong are they? How safe are you on your side and how powerful am I on mine? This safe?
(LUNGES FORWARD)
This powerful?
(FURTHER FORWARD)
Don't be afraid? I'm only playing. It's only a game. My game.
PAUSE
I can touch the silence - I can taste the darkness.. the breath of a hand on my naked shoulder like the alighting of the smallest of birds.. .a slow, lingering touch on my flesh... it is him.. am I awake?
|
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 246
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 1:04 pm: |
|
Robert
I enjoyed the pants off 'Mania', not at all the rant of a maniac I felt, we see this very type of dogmatic, unswervable thinking at play on these very boards sometimes.
You really started finding your mark about a third through where you have your Jack make up, dress and bejewel the harlot in her own bodily fluids and bits. Quite a canny observation I feel.
I'm beginning to honestly think that this poetry board may well be bringing us closer to an original portrait of Jack far quicker than any amount of discussion, as if the poetry reveals more of the heart-felt and honest conclusions we may have about Jack.
Or it just might be excellent poetry with no meaningful undertone. I feel the former. |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 247
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2003 - 1:24 pm: |
|
Chris
my honest advice to you is to give up census lists and the like and start writing like you have done here. This third part is a superb piece of writing, far too good for an 'umble author like me goodself to offer critic upon.
This is some of the finest writing that has come my way for many a long year, and I am very impressed with your style, imaginative construction and the chilling portraits of the two characters who may be one and the same.
It is good that you keep your reader guessing, this holds their attention well.
You probably do not realise it but you are painting a very convincing portrait of Thomas Cutbush as a boy and young man, from the little we know about his childhood and formative years, but that is by the by.
I enjoy the way you treat the difficult subject of sex, giving it a biological vitality and deep rooted anxious fear that pure sex could never have, and it is here where I think you touch a most vital chord of enormous import to the subject.
One that has been sadly ignored by most contributing to the subject. I of course don't mean the subject of sex or whether Jack was a sexual serial killer or not, what you talk about is a hatred of sex as a biolgical function of human reproduction, and that quite honestly actually disgusts many people, especially men who kill women. You captured perfectly a man's profound unhappiness that he is but spawn of pleasure atwixt another man and his mother, and you also point out in dramatic fashion that every time a man puts himself back into that void for his own pleasure he is stabbing that worm in the bud.
A truly provocative and superb piece of work. |
|
Use of these
message boards implies agreement and consent to our Terms of Use.
The views expressed here in no way reflect the views of the owners and
operators of Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Our old message board content (45,000+ messages) is no longer available online, but a complete archive
is available on the Casebook At Home Edition, for 19.99 (US) plus shipping.
The "At Home" Edition works just like the real web site, but with absolutely no advertisements.
You can browse it anywhere - in the car, on the plane, on your front porch - without ever needing to hook up to
an internet connection. Click here to buy the Casebook At Home Edition.
|
|
|
|
