Foreword
There used to be a place in Glasgow we called "The Box".
It was where musicians went when they'd already tried everywhere else.
A lot of the musicians there had the same name - Mark and Mark,
Joe and Joe, Paul and Paul, Steve and Steve, Stuart and Stuart -
but there was only one person there called Dr Semple,
and he wasn't even a musician.
No one was quite sure what he was doing there.
For a while he helped run the little record company,
but then Creation stole their band -
and he took to sitting on the sofa,
waiting for the settlement money to come,
so's he could start again.
When it finally did come though,
it got spent on something else,
and Dr Semple had already got kind of used
to just sitting on the sofa.
And then he began to make up these strange tales....
© Stuart David 1997
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The Pebble Heart Trilogy
Part One: Pebble Heart
She has cat's eyes -
And a pebble heart
We were sat on a bench watching the sea,
when an old woman asked if she could sit down beside us.
'I've walked a bit further than I should have,' she said.
She pointed to where she lived,
and later on she walked off in the opposite direction.
'Perhaps she can only walk with the sea on her right hand side,'
said the girl with the cat's eyes, 'perhaps she'll have to go all the way around the island.'
She has a pebble heart -
And a diamond inside her head
Part Two: The Concerns of Pebble Heart's Sister
'Just lately, my little sister has emigrated
to the pocket of
Semple's denim shirt.
She is very small, and completely
invisible.
Occasionally Semple brings her out, between
finger and thumb,
he strokes her hair, tickles her beneath the chin,
kisses her softly -
whilst the voyeur looks on
from his adjoining sofa.
I do not know if she is happy
with her new life,
but I've begun to worry about how
she will manage to write me my gorgeous letters from
in there.'
Semple's reply to The Concerns of Pebble Hearts Sister:
'Pebble Heart belongs to me now and me alone.
We
are happy together.'
Part Three: Thunder!
The thunder rolled in as I sat on the sofa,
Pebble Heart sitting in the palm
of my hand.
After the first rumble she jumped from my hand
and cowered
in the corner of the pocket of my denim shirt.
As lightening flashes across
the African plains,
Pygmies leap from their sofas and take refuge in the
trunks of elephants.
The voyeur sits on the sofa hiding behind his glasses.
The elephants, in turn, hide in their pyjamas
or under beds.
In my mind's
eye, the vultures hover overhead,
looking for the carcasses of ideas
which have been struck down by the storm,
of which there are many.
© David F Semple
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or a modification of this file, or any extract from this file, by any means.
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