"Jack of All Tales" by Alex Shenstone
Jack Of All Tales
His childhood friend.
Her face, even now, a memory with no end.
Chasing each other with pails of water.
The happiest son. The brightest daughter.
Cheering together, on their high crescent hill.
Gleeful when rain made the well overspill.
But when soft grass is sodden so slick,
it’s just too easy for a running child to
slip.
Tumbling. Gasping. Poor young Jack.
His crown now bearing a deep-set crack.
He was felled. Eyes shut. Feeling split in two.
So there was no-one to stop Jill from tumbling too.
Hair whipping. Neck snapped right through.
The filled pail tipped, right by her face.
Water spilling. Mouth filling. Soaking her dress of lace.
She was all that was fanciful.
She was all his delight.
She was all that was honourable.
She’d been his first light.
So he looked for magic, in his living days thereafter.
The only thing he could think of to match her laughter.
And one day he found it, in old, withered hands.
Three sparks, which when put in earth, could surpass all lands.
He relished in the climb. The unknown height.
Feeling so sick, churning his guts just right.
Each grapple for stalk. Each grip of stem.
Took him far, far up, and further from them.
The mother who told him to grow up, forget.
Thinking his child-brain would purge her, his dearest friend.
He never would, and would never pretend.
So he strived to scale it, right up to the end.
Taking the green softness in his desperate fists.
Up to the swirling vapours, around his head in wisps.
Until he found the darkened place.
With flickered flame in brass, showing him his face.
He had to weave between those flickers.
Those licks of waxen heat with their soft, soft whispers.
Jack be nimble. Jack be quick.
If you want to survive, you must be slick.
Slicker than the plains of water sodden grass.
But Jack had learned, so through those flames he passed.
Now was when he found the giant’s seat.
His blood boiled, like steam on swirling sleet.
He looked up at that tower of flesh.
He looked at it and thought a thought so fresh:
I shall break its bones to make my bed.
And he did. He felled the tower. Dead.
The broken crowned climber.
Leaper.
Giant-slayer.
Washing stains of water from his clothes,
with pails of blood in gushing droves.
He plucked it apart.
Thus he plucked himself, at heart.
This boy displaced in giant’s bones and blood,
soon awoke as a man, in that same carcass flood.
The bone was his mahogany,
the sliding blood his silk finery.
But all blood dries.
And the craving for soft wetness tries.
Tries and tries his mind.
So now, new softness he had to find.
Even if he must descend from his glorious height.
To the dank and the cold. To a more lacklustre light.
He will find it. The warm. The bold.
He will find the bodies within which silk does fold.
Behind those glossing, flattering eyes.
He’ll rip them. Take the silk from their flesh disguise.
Rip. Rip. Rip.
They looked for him; he gave the whole world the slip.
He freezes and floats like a crystal of ice.
Out of the alleys and back up to the skies.
The man is the cold and the cold is the man.
He’ll shudder a woman’s collar. A playful plan.
No thaw. No mercy.
Not for this old boy, feeling naught for mortality.
No matter how safe you may feel you are tucked.
We are all oh so easily plucked.
Like drops of water from a too shallow well.
Or beans of magic, from where no-one can tell.
Like slicking drips of still hot candlewax.
Or giant’s blood seeping onto golden crown cracks.
Like eyes, plucked, from never blinking sockets.
Or frost sticking to long-held lockets.
He is a Jack of all trades. Unique in all tales, bar none.
But you will call him Master when you realise
that these are not many tales.
Just one.
Lady Of Fair Clay
The bridge was old, like its urban home.
Crumbled.
Splintered.
Stately ruled by a debris monarch.
The lady was the same.
Debris, with splits in her hands,
and cracks in her eyes.
A clay woman.
Fashioned by someone who had cared for her, once.
Then they abandoned her under a wild sun,
and a world of rain.
Now, like her bridge,
there is a rot at heart.
Dark sap leaks from her balustrades,
making her tremble, and threaten collapse.
But the world around her wanted her standing.
So they transplanted into her their industry.
She was subject to their steel refinery,
their iron cladding.
They had to slice out her bone marrow,
but they made her stand tall.
However, her wingspan strung her metal thin.
She was a bent shepherd’s crook
over highly wrought railings.
Bow-spined. Jawline bent in.
Taut and marked with smudging wear.
Time to touch up the outer skin.
Hot skin gold, and cold skin silver.
A flickered blush, a lacquered mouth.
Cartilage replaced with those eye–aweing metals.
Meant to please.
Though she was a stranger to pleasure,
soon she would know of it.
Others came to pleasure themselves
with her glowing skin.
They do not flay her.
That would damage what they want from her.
The pick and peel.
Pick and peel.
Pick and peel.
Then they walk away and leave her bare.
Stripped back down to wet clay,
her structure long withered.
They watch her.
The men.
They watch her leak and droop.
Her body, a slave of Mistress Vertigo
and her brother, Gravity.
Her clay fingers forge into all that they grip.
Melting into foundations,
making them fall apart alongside her.
You can patch her, supplant her bones and skin,
and keep a watchful eye all you like.
She was built first.
Before you. Before the city.
Before your London Bridge.
When London Bridge is falling down,
in the fair lady’s eye it is nothing.
Because she is older.
Older.
Older.
Mulberry Woman. Crimson Girl.
What a lady, this mother.
Some were of the mind that she had learned to fly,
amidst her days of nurture,
and her nights of kind.
She was mulberry.
Warm red mixed with the elegance of noir.
All into a woman.
Upon her children she doted,
feeding them from her fingertips.
Her kisses to their foreheads conveying more,
than any soliloquy could ever dare.
She dared to love her children
with everything she had,
and they all loved her back for it.
Except one.
She said the words, fluttered the eyes,
and simpered out her baby smile.
But our lady had made a shelled-out child.
A carcass that she could not see.
A child who picked the red out of everything.
The red colouring pencil.
The red pen ink.
The red cherries from another’s garden.
When her mother was out,
she would walk around her house.
The other children’s rooms.
Her mother’s room.
The kitchen.
That red-hobbed kitchen with rings
the same size as her hands.
Little hands.
Adept at holding little things.
Threads.
Flower stems.
Matches,
in minute boxes.
Those boxes can fit so many matches.
Too many.
Too many to be in the hands of a
little girl who liked the colour red.
The others were none-the-wiser,
in their absently hued heads.
The red came under their doors.
Up their walls.
Into their beds.
Taking them, like the day takes the mayfly.
The girl found the hearth and curled up in its throb.
The red went into her,
and she liked how it burned
in the end.
When the mulberry came home,
she saw the blood-blotted plot.
She saw her vermillion children,
and she screamed.
Such a crimson scream.
Darling Shadow
He’s wily.
That little shadow at the window.
Seeming shy.
Seeming meek.
Seeming child.
But clever. Oh so clever.
Clever enough to hide in the threads of the night,
and yet stand out darker, drawing in naïve sight.
He lands like condensation in a new-born chill.
His cold is like ink.
Like an iced adult drink.
Like goose-bumped skin. Raised.
On the brink.
Cold and warm clash when fingers mesh.
The non-substantial interlocking with wary flesh.
Hands coaxing.
Nightdress floating.
Childhood spinning.
Ribbons and lace and strewn hair, dizzying.
Along with the shadow, they’re quite the darling pair.
The breeze blows in light,
but the streams are like thrown anchors. Tight.
It takes a turn about the room.
Simpering.
Fluttering.
Coaxing the girl in the dress, just so.
Working and consorting with her shadow.
Now, to the window they must go.
Out flies our teasing breeze.
Playing on the clouds, spiralling them in haze.
The shadow seems to melt, as it sidles out
past the frame.
Like the whole night, offering out its hand.
Though when the nightdress drifted past the sill, fluttering through.
I know not, if that darling girl flew.
ALEX SHENSTONE (he/him) is a transgender, UK-based Creative Writing Masters student. He spends most of his time binge-watching TV shows, adores the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he often gets inspired by the darker aspects of life. His debut poetry collection "Jack of All Tales" is out with Alien Buddha Press — plus, he has other work out with Blood & Bourbon, Ghost Orchid Press, Daily Drunk Mag, Dreich, and others. He can be found on Twitter at @AlexakaSatan.