Mobstr is a cheeky London street artist who has cleverly manipulated municipal anti-graffiti crews into unwitting participation in his wall art/lit projects. In his series called "The Story", Mobstr added a sentence to a wall and waited until it was painted over to return and continue the story.
This episode of "The Story" is composed of seven related wall posts.
My mouth is a trap door that needs sewing shut.
It speaks fast before faltering.
Talk is not cheap, loose tongues are costly in love and war.
My brain is a fucking haystack, and I can’t find the needle to stitch it up.
It sparks off recklessly, bolstering,
Searching fecklessly, trying to fit around the words like a slippery glove without purchase.
The more I scrabbled, the more I tore to search it, the more loosely words were cut, the more I grasped the thread, the more it tangled, the more circular became the rut, not reaping but fat handed in the morning, surely altering everything.
I foraged, for my life, and fell in face first to find all my failings. I couldn’t speak what I was saying, couldn’t call out what I was portraying, dumbly plundering for the point.
The eye of the storm was huge as a barn, I could see it clean before me, whilst I threaded nothing but pounding knots in my stomach.
A mess that wound around and around, starting where it finished like the fish that eats itself, tying me down, holding me hostage to the wrong message, I was bound by such a thin but solid line, an invisible noose, a fibre wire.
I can’t hack it up because it is stuck in my throat.
I can’t shed it because it’s tattooed all over my head.
I can’t purge it from this useless vessel because I keep breathing it the fuck back in.
I can’t hide it because it’s written all over my face.
I can express myself freely but it costs me, I can chase but keep going in circles, I can remove myself and stay hidden but who comes looking?
I can disappear and stay silent but my surrender is as loud as drums.
I needed stitching up. It was needless, it was needless. I just wanted to open up.
I needed stitching up. It was needless, it was needless. I just wanted to open up, like the ground, to be swallowed whole.
You didn’t notice, but I sent you an armarda,
I sent a battalion of flutes and notes from my chest
To fight with the fading, whilst we were farther,
To arrest you further, pull your heart, make you invest.
You didn’t notice, but I called in an army.
I sent a booting of precision and uniform, flung,
To fight with the temptation whilst you were out of town.
I sang so loud you were bound to hear what I’d done.
But this orchestral silence;
It’s an interval that never ends.
And I wrote in invisible ink,
But I dare not send.
If you were a general I think I’d question your tack,
Because I let you invade, you explode, and I want my country back.
You crossed over the borders, and you fired at will.
You reap the benefits, but the fall out lingers still
And what more is left of me, now you’ve spread across my land?
I’ve been fighting for ceasefires, though I know you got what you planned.
And this ridiculous stand off;
I’ve been misfiring all my guns.
And I know I started the war,
But you don’t show, so I hold my tongue.
This excellent languor has me halted in your bed
My fingers converse with your skin; there’s a dialogue of dermic wanderlust in my head.
Motivation to move has been extinguished by your hand
The conversations of our embrace, the exploration in your room, and the horizontal of your land.
The carapace to your bones is being mapped by my lips, postponing wakefulness hip by hip, and denying the days malaise kiss by kiss.
We are kinetic in mind, and electric going in. I want to tread these waters, scale this fortress, and map the borders from without and from within.
I fall into the fjords, but I am not intrepid, I am cautious.
The labyrinth of my lust is always too short-lived as we are frenetic, and busy, so I’ve to keep from sailing adrift, and I can already sense a rift that’s parting.
I’ve a second breath, and thunder the storms again. Not brave enough to speak, but I’ve spoken it where I have lain, post, I am small and have nothing to say, and I hope that I’ve said it, not given it away.
I am just tiptoeing the verge, entirely filled with impulse, and I am struggling for words.
This excellent languor has me halted in your bed
My fingers converse with your skin; there’s a dialogue of incredible wanderlust in my head.
My belt, a python,
Snaked around my waist and hips.
Who is eating whom?
My belt, a python,
Snaked around my delicates.
A waste of good breath.
My belt, a boa.
Slithered under constriction,
At least I’m slender.
My belt, a boa.
Hard, muscular, dangerous.
But I’ve the venom.
I don’t think it’s too obvious, unless you’re close enough to hear it, but I’m obsessive.
I’ll find it, I’ll stumble upon it from a variety of networked and tenuously slim threads – a snippet of text, a whispered idea, a brief and offhand mention – and I will grasp it to death. I will put it on repeat. I will open it up, finger through the innards, investigate the mechanisms, and dive from the inside, bursting out. You’ve to dissect the beast to understand the interior workings, to comprehend the thing. I will research the words. I will infatuate over the sentiments. I will force my heartbeats to clack with the drums. My eyes roll to the licks, my arms wave to the organs, my feet pound the street so fucking hard that I will make the thudding sound out in real life, in one almighty, glorious fit.
I will make you love it, if you’re willing to hear it.
I listen so hard, so oft, so fervently that I’ve forgotten all other songs. That I want to just be it. That I just want to burst a lung singing it. That I don’t want breath, I don’t want to keep battling on, I just want to be a beat. A riff that you couldn’t possibly forget. A note that you can barely deduce. A harmony that couldn’t possibly do anything but own you.
I let it consume me. I haunt my ears and thoughts with it. I beset it on myself. I am nothing but a dramatisation of what’s making waves in my ears. And I wish this could be a feeling shared, that you could be in me, through my thoughts, for the consumption. If you even had a piece, a shred, a fingertip of this feeling, we’d be dancing in the street, climbing walls, scaling trees, standing on hilltops in the wind, fucking like wildlings in the fields, and smiling so wide our faces would be nothing but lips and teeth.
I’m coloured with this obsession. I’m handicapped to listen thirty times a day. I’m thinking in beats, moving in rhythms, and talking in tune. I’m not really hearing anything beyond it. And once I’m finished with it, drained it of all possible dreams, I’ll find another one to place in its stead.
I don’t think it’s too obvious, unless you’re close enough to hear it, but I’m obsessive.
Chapter 1
One night a little boy was woken up. It was a dark night. His Mummy and Daddy were dead, so he crept out and escaped.
Chapter 2
It was darker than ever. The little boy was scared!
The end.
Copyright Rowena H.
This was the second story I penned. See how I’ve advanced into chapters, and have already mastered the art of the cliff hanger! It’s a pretty terrifying story, for a 4-5 year old…
**Edit**
Apparently it wasn’t all that clear when I posted this, so to clarify – I wrote this *when* I was aged 4/5!
