Coffee Time Stories

By Dean Moriarty

This is a book of short stories written mostly in Cardiff but also in other countries. My books are about beauty,love, stream of consciousness,some beat writing and satire. So far I have done around 28 books and will upload them to here soon as I can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Moriarty
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310667138

Dean Moriarty

What do you do when nothing seems to be working out? Most of my books are about that place you come to when you’ve reached the desert of all you know. When nothing seems to be working out and you find there’s nowhere left to go. When all you’ve tried has come to nothing and no amount of effort brings your goals any closer and where the questions you ask appear to drop dead at your feet. When all has become a grey mist about you populated by the ghosts of all you once loved; where do you turn? I turned to writing books.

Book preview

Coffee Time Stories

By

Dean Moriarty

Copyright 2015

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Dedicated to all the coffee I drank while I wrote them.

Wake up my soul from the stone:

It’s the man from the blue deep and here he comes dragging his stone with his voice put on like a bassoon and all immaculate he is too with ever a side window in his pocket to see out of.

And I see Julie Best has been caught behind the sheds again one time too many and now wears her Sunday best for forgiveness, but she won’t get it from him, oh no, bloody swine that he is and her with a bleeding heart too.

And they say never settle for second best, but if you do that you settle for nothing, so you end up settling for anything, like Julie Best who caught one behind the bike sheds, always the bike sheds, I wonder why? And we all know who it was that done it on her. Better to kiss the stone. And she’ll be all big and round soon and blushed.

Of course, round here they don’t let their girls out because they know they won’t come back a virgin, and half of them get knocked up first time, then it’s off to the doctor quick. If only they’d let them out to be inoculated by the world they’d be alright.

And those two, who sit on the stone all ready to jump in and not a tooth left between them, what could they possibly see that’s worth seeing for them? And that’s maybe why they sit there supping their sup and already in the grave.

And Mrs. Iles the Englishwoman turned native now, always wearing black for her dead husband who was buried in the mine one day and never found again; they say his bones turned to coal to be shipped off on the coal trains to be burnt to dust in the steel mill.

Yes, Mrs. Iles and a neighbour who cackle back and forth over their black sheets that can never be got clean and not a dustbin between them.

Just outside the village is the coal mine with its horn twice a day, where the men go to work strong and come out weak and black and coughing and all this under the towering mountains all around the village.

And their religious god the biggest stone of all, a perfidious masquerade that traps them forever in its blessings and won’t let them out, ever.

But what chance have I got to escape this, the stone is too heavy.

And Jones the undertaker, making his boxes, and what else would he do? And make one for yourself Jones, there’s a good man; and all the while starving for a smile, but who would smile around there?

And the pub where they all go, like a second home it is full of their tragic spirits whether they’re there or not; a piece of themselves they leave wherever they go until that stone is closed over them forever and their spirit fades away, but until then they will drag it around and spread their news until their bones crumble.

One day it rained a lot and kept on raining and then the mountain fell down and buried most of the village and those who were left were never the same again. All my friends gone in one day and me home bad and eating ice cream that turned to stone in my belly when I heard the news.

The mine owners said it was an act of god and never took responsibility even though it was their coal mountain that fell down; but then, how can you compensate the dead?

Grief like this can never be measured; it turns the heart to stone that no god of man can ever mend.

This is the village of the stone and there’s no young here, where we’re all buried as soon as we come out, the babies crying for the stone in their mother’s milk placed there by all the generations of the black dust come before, that black granite of their hearts nailed to their breathing into every space until there’s no space left to go that is not a tomb of their doing.

I see all this and more and cry: oh wake up my soul, this doom is not yours to endure where the spiders scream and the boys with their matches to burn some hapless toad and watch it squirm in delight, no, wake up my heart or forever close the stone of this place over you.

Fly, fly from here, and leave the stone behind.

Addendum:

When I showed this to my mother to read she kept it, wouldn’t give it back and gave no explanation.

She died two years ago now and I found this again after 50 years, in with all her important papers. It was the first thing I ever wrote.

My mother was the last of them from the village at that time, all the others are gone now, except Julie Best who escaped to America with her son, and me of course. I hitch-hiked out one day on the only road in a big car that was going to the city and after I got to the city I just kept on going.

This isn’t much of a story I know, but it was my first and so I thought I’d share it as it should have been done all those years ago.

I still miss my friends and forgive them now their faults, maybe the toads won’t, but I do. I forgive me too for writing this, and perhaps my mother was right and I should have left this to be burnt with all her things as her body was cremated when I laid her memory to rest.

Buried alive:

In the grave buried under tons of dirt I wait patiently to be let out. If my parents don’t come then my friends will and if not them then my wife, surely someone will come.

It’s not fair to be left alone for so long with no one to talk to and nothing to do whatsoever but wait.

I know I shall go mad if I am here for much longer; why doesn’t someone come? Surely they can hear me screaming?

I’m exhausted and I know my fingers are bleeding. What happened? One minute I was at a party, enjoying myself and the next thing I remember I was clutching my chest with a huge pain and I couldn’t breathe and then it all went dark and I woke up here.

Maybe it’s a joke, surely it’s a joke played on me. It’s not funny, let me out now.

It’s getting stuffy and I feel sleepy but there’s so much I want to do in my life. I hope someone comes soon to let me out, I don’t like it here.

An instant cure:

A gang of kindly gentlemen were advancing slowly on a poor dear sitting on a bench in the park who was in trouble and crying.

The youngest of them, who had lost his arms and legs in the war was being pushed in his wheelchair by the oldest who had lost his mind somewhere in the last century but he had the biggest grin of them all and was constantly dribbling down the back of the neck of the one in the wheelchair.

The small dark one was a coalminer from Russia and was forever coughing up black dust. The other two were twins who had both donated an eye each to their best friend so he could see again, so the twins each had a glass eye that shone in the dark.

All five were a motley crew and to the poor dear seemed rather imposing as they bore down on her and just as they came up to her she looked up and gave a shriek and ran away and left them all scratching their heads, all except the armless one who was thinking maybe it was time for coffee.

The gang grinned and went to look for another one to cure instantly.

The magic of silence:

You can hear