Dave Migman leads a nomadic lifestyle, burning leaves trail in his wake. His first novel, The Wolf Stepped Out, is
available from Dog Horn Publishing
available from Dog Horn Publishing
Dave Migman
Wayward On The Rock
Cloud is piling up. Driven from Syros by a stiff wind. They are still praying for rain. Tonight it will rain. Peasants
gather darkly on porches. The night is closer. War. Sitting on this balcony hoping that “thing” doesn’t come back —
don’t know what it was but it was huge, a giant wasp with a black pulsating abdomen and thick spider legs. Its
wings were like thin wedges of stained glass.
An old lady down there in the gloom of the garden with a small dog ferrets around in the undergrowth, muttering in
Greek. Sky is pulling in tight, a last morsel of heaven revealed through a closing sphincter and we wait the shit to
rain down. Cricket chorus rising. The ocean beyond the building site. A generator in the fridge of my temporary
abode. Dogs barking. A shutter creaking closed. A glass filling with white wine. Something big and ugly whirring
through the vines below. Cars and scooters, hoots of horns, women shouting out, a key in a door, a rattle of flesh,
some pages clattering to the floor. Through the cloud a half moon like a glowering snake’s pupil, his black body
curling round the island. Brother of the Naxos labyrinth hunter. Mobile phones ringing everywhere; we shout down
them like the caller is deaf. They have to rot people’s brains. The same kind of damage to the cerebrum as modern
pop slush. Content with your menial binge? No? Well la la la some anorexic with a body like a golf course (flat,
boring, little bumps and full of holes!) Some of you might like that kind of thing. Go jump off a cliff, sing it to the
sky — What do I care? I’m St. Migman!
This town is a classic example of the "modern way." It’s all about veneer. Getting the look right but the fixtures are
cheap, nothing works properly for long and right now there is a terrible smell!
The serpent’s eye is wide, an open stare of anguish. A silent scream held hostage by dancing lights of TV lies.
That is my favourite dark — where the moon turns the clouds grey, immediately opposite the same cloud is inky —
the blackest point of the sky.
They are peeking through their half closed shutters, what is he doing? I’m Saint Migman scratching his fevered
poetry, rants, raves, a novel, a short story, two Booker prize wannabes and a big fat line of sky dust. That’s what
I’m doing! You just run along now and cram yourself full of moussaka and olives.
A sudden drop in temperature. The sea is still rushing the land, coughing up plastic bags and other debris — “no
thanx,” it says — take it back you evil race of overgrown monkey scum.
And we will take it back. We will have to. We are stupid. We are dumb.
Listen! I met a guy once who stabbed his father. He was driven insane by the fucker. Insane! He decided he was
going to kill the old man. Overloaded on valium and temazepam this guy turned on his father. They’d been shouting
at each other for hours. Blind with fury, he reached into the kitchen drawer, fumbled amongst the cutlery and
moved quickly to stick papa in the back. It was a spoon! Imagine that! He still got charged though.
Little palm fingers chattered by wind and cat bells continuous out there. It would be nice to hear the rain tonight.
Will it sound different than a deluge on Leith Walk?
I hear a key in the door, something opening and closing in the hallway. A key in the lock, someone having a pee,
wiping, flushing, taps, lock, return to room. WAIT! Didn’t I hear a whimper too? The fridge kicks in - TV comes on.
. . or is it the orchestra, of hers? . . . At some point in the night will our breathing become harmonious through the
walls? Will she enter my dream?
Last night there was the most indescribably beautiful girl. We were locked in embrace, I remember the smoothness
of her cheek. . . Or I think I do. There is lots going on in these dreams. I kept waking on my hard matress and
shifting my cement pillow and tumbled back into her arms. She was like this song I now listen to. At this particular
moment in a small room on an island in Greece out of your time - gone from mine but the moment, brief as it is,
well it is/was perfect.
I hope to see her again. Perhaps she exists out there. Another world, another life, perhaps she is the embodiment
of perfection and I’ve met her before - I chase her through lives and dreams - perhaps she is Ishtar, Morrighan, the
morning star - a rising flame of indestructible love. Not mortal love. Beyond that timeframe. Beyond that parody of
lust. Something hellbent in the subconcious species memory.
Pages keep slipping out. Chairs are scraping across tiled floors.
I wish I were ten years younger, goddammit!
Another bottle! And orange balls. The orange balls are nuts encased in orange, the wine is Mantinesca. The wise
seem to be mainly dead, unheeded, unheard of. The wise have been labelled outlandish freaks and ostracised. A
hippy, nutter, a lunatic anarchist whatever. When I was young and I grew my hair, had a deminwaistcoat covered in
patches, holed where I tried to drive studs in with a hammer. I painted some punk thing on the back, DOA, I think
— it kept changing. I listened to rabid thrash metal, punk, hardcore. As Grey once said, “We were the No-
generation who wore the colours that bleed.” And look what happened to us all! Poetic thugs. Drunks. Loners. But
at present there’s only me scattered to the wind. What happened to you guys? Were you so locked down in the
age of Kali? Did we lock eyes with that goddess some sultry night in a foreign place of singing palms? Did we all
dream the same girl? Do you believe you’ll find her? Here in this world?
Well I’ve seen enough ruins the past six years to fill my gut with dry mortar. It aches, this ball. I am constipated
with history. History as taught, as glimpsed in the dry walls of unknown races I saw in Morocco, in exhalted places:
Mystras, Athens. In recent years, I’ve thirsted for life. At odds with all those lonely nights I feel the urge to mix and
mingle. To taste your words and see if she is out there. Sometimes I felt her eyes upon me and I felt strong. She
wished me luck from the back of some club, she cannot come close, destiny decrees otherwise — or I’m drunk and
the pen has run away. Stuffing my face with orange-coated nuts and soft white wine. This night of my drunk. I see
visions through the ruins of Rome. Inspiration — the clarity of a battlefield thief prising gold teeth and rings off
fingers.
We look back on the ancients as though they possessed some marvellous respect of nature and we gasp as we
pass amongst the ruins of the acropoli at the mounds of pottery — wasn’t it just the same then as now? Weren’t
they as vain, as messy, as uncaring as ourselves? — only now we can add a host of pollutants, chemicals, poisons,
radiations, with all the other trash of crude spawn?
I stood there on the cliffs above Tinos, looking at all the junk puked down into the sea. I think essentially we’re the
same. At fault in the essence of our being.
Cloud is piling up. Driven from Syros by a stiff wind. They are still praying for rain. Tonight it will rain. Peasants
gather darkly on porches. The night is closer. War. Sitting on this balcony hoping that “thing” doesn’t come back —
don’t know what it was but it was huge, a giant wasp with a black pulsating abdomen and thick spider legs. Its
wings were like thin wedges of stained glass.
An old lady down there in the gloom of the garden with a small dog ferrets around in the undergrowth, muttering in
Greek. Sky is pulling in tight, a last morsel of heaven revealed through a closing sphincter and we wait the shit to
rain down. Cricket chorus rising. The ocean beyond the building site. A generator in the fridge of my temporary
abode. Dogs barking. A shutter creaking closed. A glass filling with white wine. Something big and ugly whirring
through the vines below. Cars and scooters, hoots of horns, women shouting out, a key in a door, a rattle of flesh,
some pages clattering to the floor. Through the cloud a half moon like a glowering snake’s pupil, his black body
curling round the island. Brother of the Naxos labyrinth hunter. Mobile phones ringing everywhere; we shout down
them like the caller is deaf. They have to rot people’s brains. The same kind of damage to the cerebrum as modern
pop slush. Content with your menial binge? No? Well la la la some anorexic with a body like a golf course (flat,
boring, little bumps and full of holes!) Some of you might like that kind of thing. Go jump off a cliff, sing it to the
sky — What do I care? I’m St. Migman!
This town is a classic example of the "modern way." It’s all about veneer. Getting the look right but the fixtures are
cheap, nothing works properly for long and right now there is a terrible smell!
The serpent’s eye is wide, an open stare of anguish. A silent scream held hostage by dancing lights of TV lies.
That is my favourite dark — where the moon turns the clouds grey, immediately opposite the same cloud is inky —
the blackest point of the sky.
They are peeking through their half closed shutters, what is he doing? I’m Saint Migman scratching his fevered
poetry, rants, raves, a novel, a short story, two Booker prize wannabes and a big fat line of sky dust. That’s what
I’m doing! You just run along now and cram yourself full of moussaka and olives.
A sudden drop in temperature. The sea is still rushing the land, coughing up plastic bags and other debris — “no
thanx,” it says — take it back you evil race of overgrown monkey scum.
And we will take it back. We will have to. We are stupid. We are dumb.
Listen! I met a guy once who stabbed his father. He was driven insane by the fucker. Insane! He decided he was
going to kill the old man. Overloaded on valium and temazepam this guy turned on his father. They’d been shouting
at each other for hours. Blind with fury, he reached into the kitchen drawer, fumbled amongst the cutlery and
moved quickly to stick papa in the back. It was a spoon! Imagine that! He still got charged though.
Little palm fingers chattered by wind and cat bells continuous out there. It would be nice to hear the rain tonight.
Will it sound different than a deluge on Leith Walk?
I hear a key in the door, something opening and closing in the hallway. A key in the lock, someone having a pee,
wiping, flushing, taps, lock, return to room. WAIT! Didn’t I hear a whimper too? The fridge kicks in - TV comes on.
. . or is it the orchestra, of hers? . . . At some point in the night will our breathing become harmonious through the
walls? Will she enter my dream?
Last night there was the most indescribably beautiful girl. We were locked in embrace, I remember the smoothness
of her cheek. . . Or I think I do. There is lots going on in these dreams. I kept waking on my hard matress and
shifting my cement pillow and tumbled back into her arms. She was like this song I now listen to. At this particular
moment in a small room on an island in Greece out of your time - gone from mine but the moment, brief as it is,
well it is/was perfect.
I hope to see her again. Perhaps she exists out there. Another world, another life, perhaps she is the embodiment
of perfection and I’ve met her before - I chase her through lives and dreams - perhaps she is Ishtar, Morrighan, the
morning star - a rising flame of indestructible love. Not mortal love. Beyond that timeframe. Beyond that parody of
lust. Something hellbent in the subconcious species memory.
Pages keep slipping out. Chairs are scraping across tiled floors.
I wish I were ten years younger, goddammit!
Another bottle! And orange balls. The orange balls are nuts encased in orange, the wine is Mantinesca. The wise
seem to be mainly dead, unheeded, unheard of. The wise have been labelled outlandish freaks and ostracised. A
hippy, nutter, a lunatic anarchist whatever. When I was young and I grew my hair, had a deminwaistcoat covered in
patches, holed where I tried to drive studs in with a hammer. I painted some punk thing on the back, DOA, I think
— it kept changing. I listened to rabid thrash metal, punk, hardcore. As Grey once said, “We were the No-
generation who wore the colours that bleed.” And look what happened to us all! Poetic thugs. Drunks. Loners. But
at present there’s only me scattered to the wind. What happened to you guys? Were you so locked down in the
age of Kali? Did we lock eyes with that goddess some sultry night in a foreign place of singing palms? Did we all
dream the same girl? Do you believe you’ll find her? Here in this world?
Well I’ve seen enough ruins the past six years to fill my gut with dry mortar. It aches, this ball. I am constipated
with history. History as taught, as glimpsed in the dry walls of unknown races I saw in Morocco, in exhalted places:
Mystras, Athens. In recent years, I’ve thirsted for life. At odds with all those lonely nights I feel the urge to mix and
mingle. To taste your words and see if she is out there. Sometimes I felt her eyes upon me and I felt strong. She
wished me luck from the back of some club, she cannot come close, destiny decrees otherwise — or I’m drunk and
the pen has run away. Stuffing my face with orange-coated nuts and soft white wine. This night of my drunk. I see
visions through the ruins of Rome. Inspiration — the clarity of a battlefield thief prising gold teeth and rings off
fingers.
We look back on the ancients as though they possessed some marvellous respect of nature and we gasp as we
pass amongst the ruins of the acropoli at the mounds of pottery — wasn’t it just the same then as now? Weren’t
they as vain, as messy, as uncaring as ourselves? — only now we can add a host of pollutants, chemicals, poisons,
radiations, with all the other trash of crude spawn?
I stood there on the cliffs above Tinos, looking at all the junk puked down into the sea. I think essentially we’re the
same. At fault in the essence of our being.
