On a field just outside of Manchester, I saw a panda trying frantically to gnaw off its own tail. The closer I got the harder it became to tell if it was an actual Panda, escaped from some zoo or a person dressed in a convincing panda suite.
‘When a snake devours its own tail, it symbolises finality and the locked in cycle of all living things: primarily life and death and death and life – but when a panda tries his hand at that serpentine pastime, it is simply a metaphor for stupidity. How is that fair?’
‘What else could it mean?’ I asked as politely as I could, not wanting to disturb reality any more than I had to.
It smiled, ‘that’s what I came to find out and you are going to help me.’
I gulped.
‘A gulp is a coward’s signature.’
‘Why me?’ I said as confidently as I could.
‘Everyone else averted their eyes and walked quickly passed. An old woman even tried to run, which is rarely advisable but I feared if I tried to calm her fears she would die right here in this field. And that is
too tragic even for me.’ He cleared his throat and some glittery substance was released into the air. I took a step back. ‘ I chose you because madness crowns that human skull of yours, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’ I said blankly. I was aware that I was already loosing any sense of normalcy.
His voice, calm, church sermon like went deeper and appeared to be inside my head jostling for position with my own voice until it centered itself.
He wonders if this is a new element of his long suffered psychosis.
‘My simple answer is and I’ll get on my hind legs, human style and address you as a fellow victim of
time’s unflinching advances. Are you happy? Don’t look away, I’m not recruiting you to a cult, though it’s not a bad idea is it? No I already know you wouldn’t like that. And I do know you, well as well as
someone else can know you and those voices that are chirping on even now, especially the cruel one
with the burnt toast voice – fuck off and slink back to he subconscious where you belong.’
‘Is he gone?’
I nodded not understanding why he even had to ask.
‘Good. Are you happy? It might seem like a stupid, arbitrary question. It might be pointless really but
most yearnings are I suppose, at least objectively.’ The sky turned purple.
‘Ignore that and answer.’
I shook my head and avoided its blue eyes that I was going to say looked almost human but looking
closer as I did much later I realised there was nothing human or animal like about them at all.
‘Exactly, so if I got back on my four legs as god – well that’s a crass simplification, made me and you got on my back and say we went on a trip.’ He growled. ‘Ahhh, ash glazed words. An odyssey would be
better. Anyway, would you open your mind, let the old world fall out your nose and ears and mouth or
any available orifices really, to truly experience what I have to show you and you me I should think? And if you have lost your mind as you are thinking now, I promise you will know softness and at the very least it will be interesting. Come, stop hesitating, food banks and debt are far worse for the mind than anything I have to show you.’
I assented though I felt I had little control and that my grip was loosening by the second.
He lowered himself. I got on and held his fur delicately.
‘Don’t worry about hurting me, pain is just a transitory state.’
He growled until a high pitched laugh formed. ‘You can tell me to shut the fuck up anytime you like. I’m searching for truth as much as you are.’
David Hay’s debut publication is the narrative poem Doctor Lazarus. His first poetry collection is forthcoming from Rare Swan Press. He has a collaborative work Amor Novus/A Spontaneous Prayer with Soyos Books, a pamphlet due in November from Back Room Poetry and has a novel How High the Moon coming out from Anxiety Press later this year.
Back Patio Press 