Three Poems + One Short Story/Flash Fiction by Louis Kasatkin

 

I, Camera

 

There is in the photograph you’re holding

someone taking a snapshot

of someone else posing

for someone else’s camera –

who’s being photographed by somebody

taking a picture to post online,

and in turn is getting snapped

by others taking shots

who without knowing it

are clicked for posterity

forever pointing lenses at

others in others’ images

that reduce to a single dot on the horizon,

which upon magnification

turns out to be you,

holding a photograph

of someone taking a snapshot.

 

 

You Dead or What?

“There are the dead and those who claim to be dead”,
he opined;
“For someone who’s supposed to be
 dead you seem to be doing a lot of
moving around”,
he said arching an eyebrow;
“Not that I would question your right 
to identify as dead”,
his lips dripping with irony;
“Merely that your present vivacity
doesn’t immediately convey to others
an impression that you are indeed dead”.
Hearing this mortophobic prejudice,
the one identifying as dead slid back
into the coffin muttering,
they’d wait until someone sympathetic
to their lifestyle choice comes along.

 

 

Attributed to Jacques Brel

The rain lashes the windows of the Café
abandoned by its habitues,
yet home, a shelter
to the love – lorn
betrayed by a mise-en-scene
that was supposed to say
here is your assignation,
that appointed rendezvous
for which you can now
no longer wait in vain
like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”,
for a love that always had in mind
only betrayal and you left abandoned
sat all alone and waiting
as the rain lashes
the windows of the Café.

The Guide To Being A Better Assassin

The stream of red figures scrolled along the bottom of the screen, their instantaneous updates reassuring his last minute nerves. He’d certainly come a long way, a very long way in such a short span of time. And here he was barely a minute away from his greatest success, a career defining achievement even by the impossibly high standards set by the mysterious body known colloquially as ” The Quorum”. This was going to be spectacular.

Anchored some 500 yards-the telemetry said 504.33- from the beach front of the secluded luxury holiday villa, this hired yacht was just one of five visible dots to the villa resident were he to casually cast his gaze out toward the Adriatic.

” Porax-3000 :Helping You Solve Tomorrow’s Problems Today” had caught his febrile imagination the moment he’d seen it on the dark web. Where do professional hitmen, international assassins go when they require tools to ply their trade? Well, like everyone else they go shopping online, they go Click & Collect.

Since Libertarian governments in most parts of the globe had finally enacted their legislative piece-de-resistance and de-criminalised murder, the activity, in its higher end form was regulated and made as routine a market oriented business transaction as sending Christmas baubles from atheist China to Catholic Europe.

The stream of red figures had begun slowing down from their earlier frantic scrolling, final preparation time was nearly up.

The Porax-3000, a singularly hand tooled instrument of vengeance and retribution; or as any user would have it, The Mother of all rifles. He finessed a couple of minor adjustments to the tripod legs on which it rested. Blew away some imaginary Adriatic sand. The main screen was now showing two red bands, top and bottom. Final Target Acquisition.

He’d tendered this job at 30 millions, submitted all the requisite bona fides, breakdown of costs etc. He figured he stood to clear north of 20.The Porax-3000 Killing machine coming in at 1.75 mill; the week long hire of the luxury yacht etc to establish a non-threatening background presence that was another 2.Anyway who’s counting?

The Quorum put out this job to tender; the prelim prospectus id’ed this media mogul philanthropist about to switch his financing to a Movement on the cusp of a predicted electoral earthquake that would shift the balance of power across the continent. Except since the tendering process ended, bids evaluated and contract awarded none of it would now eventuate.

What had sold him on this Killing machine was the added fillip of “Complimentary Micro-Drone” included in the price. Wow! And now 504.33 yards away onshore on the veranda to be precise and some 100 feet somewhere up in the atmosphere the micro-drone in geo-stationary orbit was feeding back micron exact telemetry to the gun mounted on the tripod. The bullet incorporated nano-GPS and was linked to the micro-drone system. A sudden gust of wind, squall of rain whatever would be circumvented by the nano GPS. The dark web sales pitch boasted that a blind man could score a perfect hit with this. But he appreciated that the apparatus had a manual operation override feature which he felt was not merely aesthetic, but also recognised and validated the user- the hitman ,The Jackal as he thought of himself, as a consummate, dispassionate artist of annihilation, turning the page of history.

Out pottered the squat obese figure of the philanthropist for his regular 45 minute post lunch deckchair nap on the veranda. The Assassin hunkered down and put his eye to the scope, like the advert said, a blind man could do this ,it was all in the feel and touch of his finger on the trigger that would initiate the release of the projectile which could never miss. And there it was, 504.33 yards away, a head exploded silently in a plume of blood and brains and all captured on the screen at his side by the micro-drone. As he sat back in his deckchair, uncorked the bottle of antique champagne, supposedly from Napoleon’s own cellar and began toasting his own success, it never occurred him that if his recently deceased target had no inkling of a micro-drone relaying targetting telemetry from over his head, then how could he?

And as the 2 distant figures got back into their anonymous looking hire car, having dismantled a tripod and its rifle and re-boxed a returned micro-done. One of the figures thought he’d heard his partner say, “Welcome to The Big Leagues, Sonny”. But he could’ve been mistaken, after all they were both professionals…

Louis Kasatkin is founder of Destiny Poets in the UK and Editorial Administrator at www.destinypoets.co.uk. For more than 20 years a Poet and Poetry promoter, Louis has been Poet-in-Residence at Wakefield Cathedral and workshop leader in schools and the wider local community.