Rusted cans lay in the sand.
Long scratchy grass grew behind the fence.
Broken struts feebly held the last of the old sign.
The old drive in.
Hadn't seen a movie for years.
A booth and two old snack shacks sat at the back.
Where people brought tickets and hot dogs.
Where cars used to pull up full of girls, boys, beer and popcorn.

Each line.
Is a meaning.
Each word a sense.
Words from the heart.

'Pick it up'

Each line,
a cause expecting result.
Each word, intent.
Speaking out and making sense.

'It feels'

Sometimes it captures the near told.
Gives it something to hold.
Sometimes it achieves its end.
A command obeyed.
A mistake waylaid.
Or a freer heart.

Shooting yellow lines.
Darting up the grey roads.
Roadside the corn shines.
Oases form and disappear.
Wind rushed trees.
Red clapperboard.
Silver slivers of corn stores.
Against a blue sky.

He created a universe.
From his Oxford office.
Betwen bouts of fear and crippling anxiety.
He changed the world order.
He gave geometry maths.
And the world force and mass.
He was what is commonly called a genius.
For all of this he was a mess.
A lopping, misanthropic man.
A man who did not allow himself the warmth of love.
He gave thermodynamics the fire it needed to breathe.
And quenched his own with work.

It is not without merit.
These sweltering days.
Where the brain has melted into swollen legs.
Where the air is too hot to move.
Where everything shimmers and hovers.
A static summer standstill.
If energy is constant why is it so hot now?
If mass is constant why does everything feel so heavy?
Shouldn't complain.
Tomorrow it'll rain.

Sleeping.

Is the nicest thing in the world.

It is bliss.

Sleep is the warmest, most beautiful state.

It is perfect.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

I love sleep.

More speed, less haste.

Flapping gets you no where.

Slow and steady catches the mouse.

But the early bird catches the worm.

Perspex rimmed sunglasses
Large enough to eat off.
Indellibly red lips and nails as hard as shiny pebbles.
Pick, pick and swoosh flick.
Her left hand fidgets and her right, flicks, flicks.
Catching the light and swallowing it her throat burns.
She gurgles the warmth.
Rolling it around her tonsils, feeling its weight.
Tasting the sun.
She waits.

Like slipping into a warm bath
Or between silk sheets.
Falling without a care.
Watching as you're led away.
Falling.
Without a want for will.
Falling.
Straight into a love affair.

Like slipping into a warm bath
Or between silk sheets.
Falling without a care.
Watching as you're led away.
Falling.
Without a want for will.
Falling.
Straight into a love affair.

Like slipping into a warm bath
Or between silk sheets.
Falling without a care.
Watching as you're led away.
Falling.
Without a want for will.
Falling.
Straight into a love affair.

He took a good thick slice.
They'd be able to tell in a couple of weeks if they'd made a difference.
Four days later she sat with her son and ate.
Blue slipper satin bristling under high kitchen lights
And the feeling of burning numbness in her chest.
Her son had cooked her dinner.
She'd put on a dress.

They took a diseased lung
And had to shave her heart.
The knife slipped in.
Held by a man in a white mask.
Like he was taking butter for his toast.

The hatmaker's pins.
The bootman's hammer.
The DJ's records.
And the dancer's soles.
The shopkeeper's accounts.
The plumber's spanner.
The clerk's pen.
And the teacher's chalk.
Professional themes.

His eyes swivelled in his ruddy, rosy cheeked head.

Like they were looking for a fire escape.

His finger tips twitched.

And his lips were licked wet with spit.

It is all in the body language.

She shifted from one foot to the other.

Like she was already running.

Her body curled into itself.

And exasperation and courtesy fought across her face.

He said he'd love to, could think of nothing nicer.

And she apologised.

 

Life is fluffy oversized rabbits.

Little boys who are starting to talk.

And tiny baby girls with big yawns.

Life is the water logged allottment.

Loving laid kitchen tiles.

And underfloor heating.

Life is the masts' clink clink.

The old lady's present.

The neighbours who know everything.

And the passers by.

It is the old pub.

The old pub, made new.

And the climb to the top of the hill for the view.

This is life in the making.

 

 

 

 

Plastic talons.
Gel filled, colour of football strips or gold tipped.
Tans.
Suffusing skin in an orange tinge.
Extensions.
Farmed hair that just won't stick.
Surgery.
Knives and needles slipping in.
Magazines full of fat and thin.
Magazines screaming to us to buy new skins.
Desperate to be perfect.
Wishing our true selves a better way.
Going further and further the wrong way.

Bang.
A red flower blooms in her head.
Bang.
A red flood drowns her blouse.
Bang.
She's dead.
The hard metal of the gun had felt heavy in his hand.
Now he couldn't even feel it.
Now she was dead.
Bang.
Gone were the memories of sunny childish limbs waving in the air.
Gone were the I Love Lucy episodes on repeat.
Gone the love of gone off bananas and kisses in heat.
No more desires.
No more

Swathes of undulating grassland.
Near to dry.
Swathes of undulating grassland.
Turning to dry.
Swathes of dry scrubland.
Turning to dust.
Swathes of pale yellow desert.
Turning to pockets of palms.

It's strange, I can hear her voice in the tight air of black tyres.
'Primitive, from the primordial slime.'
Pumping through
Clapperboarded silence,
And the swish, swish of a sprinkler's twist.
The tiny drops arc in a delicate haze.
Keeping spongy, thick bladed verge grass like.

The silent bird sitting on one of many wires.
Its tiny body colourless against the weight of sky.
The towering, turning turbine desert.
The new windmills taking over the palms of Palm Springs.

The red of distant barns.
The endless blue sky.
The endless blue sky and tendrils of cloud.
The endless blue sky and a mountain storm.
The endless grey sky and its dark waterfalls of rain stripped by thunder bolts.

It is a Ghost City.
Abandoned to what is left.
Was it lack of money?
Lack of community spirit?
Dying industry?
Changes in manufacturing?
Bad management?
Chance?
The council had messed up.
The coffers were dry.
It is a Ghost City.
Populated by marauding collections of mismatched citizens.
People drive tractors to farm what used to be parking lots.
People fashion new homes out of abandoned homes.
People create parks and temporary health centres.
People queue at the few official buildings left.
It is not complete anarchy you know.
Others fight and scavenge and use it as an opportunity for crime.
This often happens in towns.
Less often in cities.
This is what is left when human error has had its way.

Why so mean?
The corpse was sitting up.
His legs straight in front of him one slightly pulled up in support.
He was lurched forward.
A drooping bony hand with a map of bare veins reached out.
The flayed flesh of the skinless corpse hung for dear life to the bones.
His inner cavaties were ripped open to show muscle, fat and fibres.
Show compassion to yourself.
Soon all will be flesh and dust.

One surface.
20 reflections.
A thousand shades.
One surface.
Multiplied by reflections.
A single surface.
One layer.
No depth.
With layers and layers of imagery.
A mirrored oval.
Seamless.
Endless in its fixed entirety.
Faultless in its stream of endlessly changing imagery.
It stands so still.
Constant movement its mirrored constant.
A shiny singular stone in one pond.

She was all elbows and manly hands.

What she said was emphasised by huge rolling eyes.

She was married.

She'd worked here for a couple of years.

Always the same type of work.

She'd drifted in from another city.

And thought maybe they'd stay.

She was younger than her grey eyes.

And her beautiful, scarred hands.

His crisp white hair shivered with grey.
And his uniform was expertly pressed.
He could have been from a film set.
Thick but well kept.
The perfect cop.
Twenty years old he'd had less hip heft.
And had been on battery and theft.
He'd ran down alleys full of shadows and fire escapes.
He'd dodged bullets.
Jumped fences.
Now he walked marble floors maintaining order in easy calm.
Waiting for his pension.
Foxed by convention. 

Never had the triumph over time and space been more complete.
Than in that moment of heat.
When full possession meant the order of all fell into place.
The place he had traced.
Where he hung his hat.
And sat and ate his meals.
The place he slept.
Until that moment he'd merely been their pet.
Now it was he who possessed.

The euphoria of partly refreshed exhaustion.
24 hours without sleep.
But yet capable of thought and speech.
A muffle through which all sounds are muffled.
All sights are blurred.
And every task is easy.
Easier than if the whole brain were involved.

How do you have truth,
If you don't know what truth is?
What's the point in trying,
If you don't know you can't suspend the knowledge you don't know.
Neither affirm or deny
Nor deny the fact you could affirm or deny.
Nor affirm it.
If it is cold it is cold?
What is cold?
It is this.
If this leads to immorality or paralysis?
I examine.
What do I know?

Inside the jet the engine's humming was loud.

The cloudy froth off the white wing was light lined.

It smelt of recycled air, tired bodies and soap.

People idly snacked while others slept.

Down below was the smallest and the widest land expanse, she'd ever seen.

It is early.
So early nothing is awake.
It is still dark and dumb with sleep.
The light has to be put on.
Automatic pilot brings clothes and scalding tea.
And slipping out the door.
I remember thinking I'd left the gas on.
Someone else carried my case.
Strips of light sped past the window.
Streaking through the silhouettes on the street.
First light came into the sky as we drove.
This was the first sunset.

Waiting.
Lying in the gentle dark.
Waiting for it all to begin.
Everything is ready.
It has been for days.
Soon it will start.
One minute it was weeks away.
Months.
Now it's tomorrow.
Time became conflated and has stopped in the waiting dark.
A wait without anticipation.
Merely a nod to time.
Ticking time.
Time has become folded away.
Buried in this moment's appreciation.