Laughing crows eye you hungrily

Forever draining but never dry
Airbrush sprayed. Fawn and dead red brown.
Imitated by camouflage.
This is the real thing.
In frozen colour drained grey
Shot through by distant godly memory of summer
Wheel specks of feathered dust.
Everything below is stunted and slowed.
Frozen and thawed.
Clinging on.

Hiding

The machine will not stop.
lights keep flashing
Pistons thumping
Churning out
Junk

They keep building
Brick on brick on brick
Ever taller
Wider
Capacious

We have gathered
And hunted
Standing
Surrounded
By our kills

The cruelty of boredom
Is corrosive
Flames
need a spark
To ignite

Calder

The mist is low over the valley

Concrete grey walls entomb us all.

Even the incomers

With their bunting

And better ways

Of living better lives

Feel the dread

Of living with yourself

Etch-a-sketch

Let’s write new stories.

In chalk on the pavement

About nothing and no one

The rain will come

and wash them away

When it has dried

We will start again

leaves falling

rust growing

Machines seizing

Fuel running out

As we forget

How to make fire

And return to the sea.

New Build

One foot, then the other
jerking through the sludge.
Scanning the darkening water
while fireworks explode
in impotent memory of anger.

Low flight skims the surface.
Sky lighter than the oil below.
All the shades and sculpture of the clouds
has become flattened into silhouette.

The world is disappearing before me
as a tiny lion hunts in dying bramble
scenting still smaller things,
hiding in the straw of forgotten summer.

The lights if the horizon coming into focus,
some bleeding down the foreground,
like an oil paint reflection of the actual.
Stillness caressed by distant traffic
and the phasing, persistent wail of a siren.

A terrifying story.

Earth moving
slower than I,
sliding and crushing.
Forcing upwards. 
Fragments worn, 
waterborne,
forming again 
According to current.

I fight against the upward climb.
Dig my toes into the gravel,
suck in more air
and then, for a moment I am king.
Scramble, slip, slide and stumble,
inexorable descent.
The valley floor in shade
The bog which never dries.
Downward evermore

Following water's course. 
To the plain open terror.
leave like the Iron Man.

Dockland - rewrite

Had another go at making music. I say 'music' - I mean passing the time. Quite pleased I managed to keep something minimal though.

Vapours.

A detuned radio and the howl of a banshee
Pixels bleeding green, brown and purple,
blotch, dot and smear.
The bunker door is closed.
Against the horizon
where nothing good can be seen

Bastle

To eke,
to scratch
to scrape out an existence
on the edge, in the margin
beyond the horizon.

The sour taste of fruit
picked too early
The soreness of digging
land that will not yield.
Failing, infertile, acidic.

Respite from wind,
temporary, brief.
Crouched behind drystone,
wishing like a madman.
that wild land could cure a wild mind.

Around the headland.

Exploding from gorse
Forked tail, tumbling
Glide, dip and burst upward
Playful flight.
Gracefully carving invisible shapes

Scrag and clag on a black rock shoreline
Surly and beautiful
Lazy turbine rolling
Flag limply hanging
Buoy rocking softly

The water's languid advance
Gently inevitable.

Dockland

Thinking of a photograph
I try to drive towards the sunset.
Veering off course
chasing a golden moment
in which the purple haze sky
explodes behind cranes and razor wire
burning up the sea
I glance from the traffic
down long lines of glazed brick terraces
framing the dark drama of back lit clouds
and the promise of a shoreline
but by the time I can turn
I am too late
heaven's fire is extinguished
the deep blue of early night has fallen
and I am on earth again.

Granite

Loops repeat.
Slices of life.
Butchered.
Prime cuts.
Of sensation
Cleaved into
Neat shapes.
Gorge yourself
Tear into
Raw flesh
Drive thru
24/7
Feed
Insatiable.
No one cares
Like you.

Ultraviolet

Straw dry.

Tinderbox.

Angry.

Stamping.

Kicking.

The stable door.

is bolted

but the hinges

are loose

Clouds of dust,

droning wasps,

biting flies.

The sun is high

and the tap still drips

Moss

Flight paths following plough lines
Beyond long horizons,
disappearing into haze.
Land as flat as the roar of traffic.

I am washed up on this island
of riotous hedgerows and fly tipped waste
Stripped bare peat land and swerving arcs of tyre marks.
I am sinking into the nowhere between places.

I do not flinch at hollow crack of gunfire.
We are over the border.
Between the lines.
This is a nation state of warning signs and fences.
Sunbleached hand scrawled threats to would be intruders.
Razorwire in the wilderness.
The distant growl of an opened throttle rising to a whine.

A principality of faceless metal barns, deep ditches and plants that leave welts and blemishes on springwhite skin.

An outpost of hidden glades, light and green and cool, silent.
Blossom fallen on sun baked ground. Blooming branches basking.
Undisturbed.

Reedbed

I remember cutting through reed lined paths, empty of strolling pushchairs. I remember cutting corners on roads stripped of traffic. I remember the silence of junctions and the blankness of pavements. 

All that was needed were weeds and shattered glass. All that was needed was a few burnt out cars, a few forced shutters, the wail of an alarm like a tiny bird crying for dead parents. All that was needed was a flickering in the corner of my vision, a rustle, the whip crack of a broken twig and I'd be alert, alive to primal instinct and reaching for weapons or ready to flee. 

The cat lounged on a wall, I swear it had an eyebrow raised. Quizzically. To where had they all gone? 

Mile upon mile of silent engines, untouched toys behind garden fences. Bus stops just yawning empty spaces. The world like an unwound clock. 

An old man sits on the lock gate and soaks in the quiet. He looks up as I approach, alerted by the crunch of rubber on the compacted gravel. He is one with the pitch painted wood, the moss and tiny, tumbling plants. He is clay and wool and red brickworks, coal smoke and infant mortality. Tin bath and demolition. Space race, Elvis new fangled, father in the trenches, November Sunday a silent day. He watches me and I feel like an interloper. Imperceptibly he nods and resumes staring out over the brackish water into the bramble and tangle beyond. 

Her death was novelty. Fuck off no way, get to fuck, don't take the piss novelty. Her death was have you heard did you see I reckon it was currency. Traded snippets of gory details. Last words, tangled bloody photography. Her death was nothing to me. 

The land beyond the cut is rugged and brutal. Shoved and smashed by digger and wrecking ball. A moonscape meteor site surrounded by forgotten fences, snipped and bent. From here belched smoke, here great long clanking, hissing, lurching trains were drawn in and repelled. A place of importance. Whistles and shift times, long standing union men and boys learning the ropes. Lines of bicycles, gas lamps and morning mist, evening rain, slippery cobbles. Spitting and swearing, the panic of an accident, the grim duty of informing the relatives. Underpay, malnutrition and vast profit. This was somewhere. A whole civilization buried under sickly turf. 

Not even worth landscaping. Not even worth a plaque. 

Tiny birds skim and take even tinier insects from the water. I drink from a plastic bottle. The sun is coming high and the stillness is such that the world seems to turn under my feet. 

I do not see the brave faced child marching. His little world broken. The little child whose face says that he knows that no magic or money can turn things back. I do not see that for many years. I do not want to see that. 

I see fields of rape stretching away, yellow blankets laid over the earth. I look for scrubland to savour the contrast. I pass the walls of sheet metal walls of scrap yards and hear the bark of dogs always on edge and always on chain. Waste guarded. I wonder who would want to steal a crushed car. 

I head further, past sleepy coppices of shady trees, banks of ivy and back yards with rubbish tumbling down to the bank. Past the overgrown coal sidings, smashed lanterns atop listing wooden poles, a few marooned trucks from another time rot slowly on rails dull rust red. Look along them is to feel slightly sea sick, weaving slightly on woodworm eaten shifting sleepers. Twisted history next to the shining, straight to London, high speed electric pathway.  

A business centre. Clean glass. Dark. Denying any vision of what's inside. Enterprise. Whatever that means. The corner of the building is cut to a sharp angle. It looks vaguely like a ship beached. This is not a land of ships. A land of barges and slow silent plodding, of dark tunnels and roof collapses. Of wheezing, hacking, blood and spittle death. This is not the land of ocean liners. 

A red brick wall is bowed. It looks like it might slide down the bank at any time. Plants sprout from cracks and mortar. Woody stemmed, resistant to twisting and hacking.  Minnows flickering. Herons watching. 

I make for the town. I want to see the empty streets. I want roll slowly down the middle of the road in the full glare of the sun. I want to catch my own childish footsteps still echoing from 15 years before. This is a waking dream. A paradise. 

I am too late. The roads are filling, the world is flooded. The dam has burst and the silence is drowned. Shutters raised, doors thrown open, useless fluorescence blinking into existence, barely seen in the sunlight.

A strange feeling of grief. Of indoor faces blinking into the light. I feel oddly out of step. I am smiling. I am the rhythm of pedals and the slow pace of thought. I am not sad. Every thing is a little distant. 

The silence was fragile and so is life. 

I do not remember any more.

Lethargy is endemic/this is the future, the future is now

An antennae scans beyond the horizon.

The packing crate is shifted in the hold of a cargo flight, moving as far as it can against the cables and ties restraining it.

Blood is rinsed from hands, the water returning to clear in the stainless steel sink.

He cycles in a mask. Coiled aggression channeled into carbon fibre.

We hear words: “When I visit the shop
and they do not have what I want,
I feel a sense of hopelessness.
I feel as if my whole life is a failure”

Cars cruise idling at 80mph. A sliding tapestry of stitchwork lights, heading in opposite directions.

She speaks: “I feel as if I must buy something. To validate the visit. To validate me. To validate my needs”

Half built buildings stand by. They wait. Wires hanging, gaps where their windows should be. On pause.

The river bends here, and as it careers around the corner, it sheds foam and bleached sticks, bottles, the head of a doll, a filthy traffic cone. Sunk into the sand is a trolley. Coin still in the slot, but too far, too treacherous for anyone to dare a retrieval. Risk outweighing reward.

We hear words: “It is not so much that I want to define myself. More that I want the job to be finished. I want to sigh and place down my bags. I want to fix myself a cup of tea”

Clouds of starlings erupt.

A child careers up the path, legs looking as if they will go from underneath them. Behind him trudges a parent, pushing a buggy with the resigned air of a ploughman. The child stops, exhausted and just sits down. Right there. Just sits down. As if that’s something you can just do, as if you’re allowed to just sit down and stop because you are tired. There and then.

The robot arm moves back and forth with a high pitched whine. Swiveling and plunging.

We hear words: “It is everything. Y’know, just I want to breath out and say, there it is, that’s what I need, I’m safe now, I’m provided for, I’m safe.

Moss grows in guttering, little purple stalks, tendrils reaching for light. Moss grows on. Slowly. Surely.

The book is taken from its shelf, flicked through, turned over and dismissed. Placed back, in the wrong place.

The church is empty. A single candle burns. The donation box is light. It smells of old stone and old books. It deadens sound.

A satellite dish hangs, rusted and useless on the corner of a pebble dashed building.

We hear words: “It is that I will have to go, again, to take that risk again, to face that feeling again, that whole tension and indecision, the ring road, the which lane, the finding a space to park, the when should I go, now or later and what if they don’t have it and I waste more time. What if I waste more time, when I just crave to be, finished. To sit down, breathe out and rest. Finished. Done. Over.”

The television plays at the end of the aisle. It is so big, the picture looks ghostly, belying the promise of clarity and sharpness promised by the paper banner that obscures a third of the screen.

The plate is pushed aside, wiped clean, mopped up. Blank now but for knife and fork.

The clouds rise from a doorway. A break.

The punchbag is thumped and thumped and thumped until her knuckles are red raw, salty sweat stinging her eyes, hair matted.

We hear words:“In the most empty of places I find peace. I am at one amongst places devoid of any spiritual meaning”

The traffic light is temporary. It is obeyed.

Leaves pool in the grid, swirling in grey water.

He dives and breaks the surface with barely a splash. White tile echo is dulled as he streaks through the water and rises to the surface.

Somewhere in the thicket, there is a fox and it’s cub.

We hear words: “I don’t know where things come from. Where they get it from. I want it to be there, on that shelf, but I don’t really know what it is or where it came from”

A kid is playing the trumpet. He’ll never be any good, but he hasn’t yet realised that. The agonised noise is frustrated but hope keeps him going.

A clock face is reflected in a puddle.

An escalator glides emptily till an elderly lady gingerly steps aboard, rearrnging her bags from two hands to one to allow herself to hold the rail.

Listen closely and you can hear the sound of an ancient river under the manhole cover.

We hear words:: “I don’t know where things come from. I don’t know how they get there. I don’t know anyone who makes these things, but I just want them to be there. Then I can sigh, breathe out, release the weight from more arms, sit down, slump, into the embrace of the sofa, fix myself a cup of tea, let my shoulders relax and drift into a dream knowing I am done, I am finished. I have what I need and I do not need for anything”

Red light reads lines. Turns lines into numbers. Numbers become some kind of meaning somewhere. Somehow.

An ant scurries in no particular direction. Lost. Instinct gone. Backward and forward. Hesitant.

Doonhame

Waif on a bike, far too big
wheels back and forth across the road
Scowling into the rain
that is turning the recycling into mush
Discarded bottle is crushed under his tyre
As he mounts the curbstone, he spits,
Flicking his rain soaked hair from his eyes, spit and flick in one movement, like the fire and recoil of a pistol.

Breathless for Jesus.

Plate glass, space station shut.
Hermetically sealed.
The things inside
Vacuum fresh.

Outside, I slowly rotate in zero gravity
Orbiting aimlessly.
Oxygen slowly running out
Waiting for the airlock to open.

Things: just in
Things: marked down
Things: which speak
to my very own soul.

I could sharpen the contrast
Recolour the lines
touch up the colour
of my fading self

Or strike out boldly
in a new direction
Rebirth by receipt
and removal of security tag.

I could browse,
muse and wonder
sheltered from static storms
and solar flares of doubt.

Tilting my head back
to feel the warm air
under the archway
I would feel myself relax

becoming purposeful,
strong and vital.
Doing my duty to myself.
Being kind to me.

But the doors stay sealed
and I am lost.

Cul de sac

You will you limbs to move
desperate concentration
an unheard mute message
to a lumpen stolid body.
slumped slack stringed puppet
awaiting the next awful scene
in the grotesque mannequin cabaret
A ghoulish ballet of exquisite torture
In which you must inflict
outrageous acts of depravity
in the name of who knows whose unseen hands.
You are paralysed
Head on your chest
Looking inward
Blaming yourself
for what you are made to do.
Maybe if you do exactly what you have to
they will leave you alone.
But still
You think
You await
a flicker
a twitch
anything to tell you that you are alive.

The hum of the fridge.

Behind the couch lie things
forgotten
abandoned
unsearched for
unmourned.
Choking in a layer of dust
remnants of another time.

The house is quiet
distant barking dogs
the hush of cars on a wet road
if there was a clock
(which there is not)
it would tickkk-pause- tockkk

slowly.

Like the waves that lap against palid grey slick sand
tide turning
you standing safe
then submerged
in cold water
numb and breathless.

Seared redraft.

High above the muddy field gripping tightly.
upon the shoulders of a man I barely know
but still trust
because of who I am told he is.
He is here now
when usually he is not.
The taught string pulls against my hands.
Ridged plastic against child's soft skin .
A scudding, grey, whipping wind
The line heaves, ebbs, then whiplashes, yanking me forward.
A little boat adrift on stormy waves, darting, dipping, plunging
and popping up like a cork.
My grip is all that ties it to the coast line.
My grip and my arms which are tiring.
Fingers cold.
This is a special day because he is here.
We must try on a special day.
We must try our best.
The tacking and turning is tugging at my shoulders, prising my fingers and trying my patience.
The vessel yearns for the open sea. The chained dog gnaws at its chain. The unfired gun holds in it an explosion of imagination. A question.

What
if
I
pulled
the...

I let go.

You run. You run so hard, like I've never seen you run before.
You run and though you smell of sweet tobacco smoke and motor oil, you run like an athlete.
You run across the slippery precarious municipal turf.
You run across what is barely grass, more a churned bog punctured by studded boots.
You run to the goal pasts, with the naked patches of bare metal and bubbling welts of welded angles.
You run, following the path of the plastic meteor
You run, you climb, a struggle, a fence you think about vaulting, but you hesitate and the momentum is gone and beyond the fence is a hill, made from earth from deep under our feet. A hill of shale and ugly black welts, a mound of landslips and gouges and you are slower now.
You are scrambling, slipping and the kite hits the slag with a thud I feel even though I can't hear it. The rigid mysterious frame is surely cracked, the bright orange sail is surely ripped and there, on the hill, way-a-way in the distance is the man who makes the world ok and he's tiny and I'm back here and I wish, with all my heart that I hadn't let go because he might fall and the ground might give way and this is a special day and on special days we are good.
and
we
try
our
best.

I'm still on the shoulders of the man. This man I'm told is your brother. Who speaks to you like he knows you more than anyone and I do not understand your secret code.

I wish I still held the tight line and could just hand it over and I wish this was true and that you were still here to reel it in and pack it away, making it all neat to be put away for next time. I wish with all the power of all the wishes I've read about.

But.

You near the summit of the industrial Everest and you stoop and go to take in your hands the polythene Icarus, to rescue the downed cosmonaut, the effort catches up with you.

And you double over and breathe, hard and heavy and look, for a just a moment, broken. Sucking air, legs burning, vision swimming.

And then, you redouble your effort and try again and...

...you have it!

You came back, slowly, Edging your way down, feet turned sideways as you stepped carefully on the bare patches. Little rivulets of gravel broke free and then you climbed the fence again and ambled back. Trudging.

There were spots of rain. Feather light flecks, no rhythm to it. We walked, slowly towards you and
as we met, I was placed down, and as my feet sink slightly into the ground. I felt more aware of my weight than I was before.

"It's fine" you said and started to untangle the bits of it which have got all tangled up.

The rain picked up. We walk back and it feels like dusk. Maybe I held your hand. I don't know. It feels like I did.

The back of the shelf.

All night conversation
The thrill of the bus journey
Drinking till you speak something of the truth
The white noise inside
Vomitting words to 200 beats per minute
Stumbling for a piss
Eyes stinging, borrowed fag unlit.
Loose change and sweat.
Waxen face, painted like a death mask.
You found nowhere.
Drunken embraces.
Slurred words as we cling to each other.
Spinning and breathing great gulps of cold smoky air
by the bus station.

Melting

Winters war is almost run.
Spring lies coiled,
taut and waiting
to burst for the light.
Throwing tendrils,
clinging to tiny handholds,
its grip thawing, digging, clawing,
colonising.
Pushing its way through hard ground
Splitting tarmac, forcing it up and out.
Smothering winters work.
Woodcut crisp lines made filthy with green.

Statuesque

Green copper is municipal.
Like great hulking metal radiators
Caked with paint but furnace hot.
the smell of chlorine and lukewarm footbaths.
Doors too heavy to yield to a child's most insistent shove.
Preformed concrete and plastic carpet which will skin your knees.
Yesterday's future is tomorrow's investment opportunity.

Caged

Raindrops cling for a while, pooling on vertical glass
defying gravity.
Then running, jagged mad patterns
leaving a wake of spidery trails.

I will walk in the fields.
Stalks of dead corn,
ghosts of a harvest
broken corpses of a summer past.

A patchwork square
divided by hawthorn
ploughed into horizontal submission
revolution suppressed by chemical.

Up and down
a sodden, rutted parade ground.
West to east.
East to west.

Pendulum

Time is the thief of attention
Blurring the detail, the diamond shimmer of dew on the grass
Smudging the edges, dulling the shine.
Colours fade in the pull of the tide.

I wrote it.

Nothing special this - I just haven't written for a bit and wrote this to demonstrate something about adapting stories for different audiences. I wondered if I could give it some attention later and flesh it out and that and it might be better than it is so putting here to remember.

There was nothing for Mr H. Dumpty to do. He was a fat man. An egg shaped man. Not a pretty young thing. A fat old egg shaped man. He’d had a job once. A job he’d enjoyed. They closed the factory down. Knocked it to the ground.

He wanted to do something but everywhere he went he got told. ‘No jobs here mate’ So he drunk. Cider, vodka, whatever he could get his hands on.

One day they was a parade. A royal parade. At last! Something to do.

Mr Dumpty got up early and went to get a good view. He climbed up on a wall and sat there, waiting for the parade. Of course, he’d brought his vodka with him.

He waited and waited, until finally the king’s parade was passing. The crowds waved and cheered and Mr Dumpty waved and cheered as well. He waved for all his life was worth. He waved, desperate to be seen, desperate not to be a nobody, desperate to be a somebody for a moment, desperate for the king to see him, just for a split second, to be gazed on by royalty, to be watched by someone who mattered, he waved and he waved and he waved so much that….

He fell. Crack. Head, pavement. Skull split like a delicate eggshell.

There was a commotion in the parade. The king had seen him fall. He ordered his men to the scene.

But it was too late. They couldn’t revive him. No matter what they tried.