Skip to main content

Crow of Doom


I've noticed that he lands on my roof towards the latter part of an evening.  Always when I'm thinking about turning the last lamp off and heading to my bed.  Black wings descend and bump against thatch and I know he's arrived, above me in the gloom of night. 

From the glow of a hastily lit candle I dare not move, paralysed to the stair that only leads me higher towards him.  I can't go up but I don't want to go back into the cold empty downstairs.  I begin to tread gently but in line with my step the grip and rip of claws echoes down from his height.  I stop, he stops.  I start and he begins again.   

Crawling between cold sheets I pull the duvet up beyond my head and curse the unlucky star that watched my birth and sent this crow.  He lands when I least want him to.  When strength dwindles to nothing and I forget my own name.  This crow of doom feeds on the bleak within and vultures at my thoughts. 

The night will be shadow filled and nightmare ridden.  Tomorrow will not bring a fresh dew.  I will be hounded by the crow until the full moon returns and I can breathe easier free of his weight.

- Photo by Peter Lindbergh, 'The Birds' for Vogue Italy

                     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Friday

This week has been hard. It seems to have just been one long downward spiral which should've meant I woke up this morning feeling beyond hope.  Especially after the 4am nightmare where I drowned and then woke up in a hot sweat. But I woke up a lot more cheerful than I have been all week.  It's freezing cold and the 2 mile walk to the office from Charing Cross was painful but I got in and have found myself smiling all day.  Smiling when a client meeting was cancelled even though I got here early to do a lot of printing for it.  Still smiling after I can't book any rooms for a few more meetings I've scheduled for my boss this afternoon.  And I'll hopefully still be smiling at 17:28 when something urgent happens as it has a habit of doing last thing on a Friday. This weekend I will be trying hard not to stress out about how many words I've written (0) or how many weeks I have left until the film from hell is to be pitched again (38) or when it has to be compl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Disconnect

There is a feeling of being lost which has been creeping up on me more and more over the past few weeks. It makes me feel as though I am a different person to the one I was a month ago. Different thoughts, different priorities. Even so far as saying different voice, different body, different face I see in the mirror. I do not feel like I am me and the more I try to reach myself or sift back over old conversations and emotions to find myself the less graspable 'I' am. I can hear my voice talking at people. Sense me ears listening and my brain nodding along happily inside my skull. But there is a disconnect. And in that gap I do not like the situation. I don't feel comfortable and I don't know how to get up and be even remotely okay about where I might end up. It may simply be a bad Monday or a bad week about to start. When the disconnected fog descends, as it certainly will again and again and tomorrow and the next day again and again, I will try to be ready to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beat Sheets

Yesterday I sat at my Grandma's kitchen table for five hours.  Out of those that time, one hour was spent staring out of her back door at squirrels and wood pigeons in the garden.  Another thirty minutes was spent with the neighbour's cat, Teddy, who decided to investigate the kitchen and my legs and the very warm boiler I was working next to. In the remaining three and a half hours I managed to write about seven pages which translates to roughly seven minutes on screen. That takes me to seventeen pages total and I have to hand in one hundred and ten pages by June.  I ideally want to have completed a first draft by March (yeah right) and then I'd have a few months to edit and wrestle with it. At the moment I'm preoccupied with several beats I need to try and hit or at least aim for in terms of Act I, Act II, Mid point, Act III, climax and a resolution (or not if I want to puzzle an audience). I've got my story laid out and I'm happy with the structure but ...
Post a Comment
Read more