ALL BULLSHIT, NO MORE POSTCARDS (TBC)

Second collection of short fiction & poetry, in progress

SAMPLES:

from there to eternity
you remind me of the glamour chase, knee-high in toed shoes, crunching over the idea of the very smell of it all, the fire, the charcoal, the black plastic nothing and here about the rooftops knowing fixing hearing smiling. a sunny evening, passing carriages, somewhere on a graffiti window kissing spiders, tunnel treetops, scowl for a Japanese phrasebox, cocksure and heads together. a saturday shake over there, dogs playing cricket, high wire electrodes splitting houses, high street yellow, branched on high rules, who knows? who knows? imagining sweeping close together, close to no-one picking nails, who are these people? sucking junctions, whisper whisper smirk and presume, hunching forward, cleaning black, noho nowhere dripping caked and cold and smoking, look away, clap hands, number four, at attention, rocking stopped, fixed personality, bicycle blue and no name, no name scarred red tie, got to love her, love her, different points prick the senses, sighed sling back crush no effort, no party, who means what? next part all round silence, sherpa index tripping still blue, further pointing to gaps in the memory, matching spores of clicks and tuts and pylons and scolding, scolding, skyline slingback, slender towers and an iron-clad prison box, and the dogs are safe and the times are hard but we’re moving, joining, join in, still building, light on the water, sun on the sea and it’s night-time down here, more like it, more like it.

a little morning
the summit of rock, licking fingers of lava
a hand-picked location, the middle of town
with satellite care we swear for our future
from somewhere a gust of nothing glides down
this is the land where the infinite stretches
rolling to sunrise and onwards to night
in there our fingers poke fun in the darkness
our blinkers tucked shut, fixed rigid and tight
splitting the air with our half-axed new visions
fragments restyled and seeking dear life
striking one higher, one larger, one faster
dropping us out into star breached black sky
but can you now say that peace was our doing
did we move mountains, alone and unarmed
were we the giants, drunk with Colossus
was it for us that the world still slept on
and can you please take me, away from this morning
down from wherever and out there to dusk
where someone breaks jawbones, once hanging from killers
where someone may smile and we might yet laugh

4.00pm on the train
a day of miserablism - wet, empty, busy with nothing. feeling 12 years old in the back of a taxi, talking about the weather. practically scolded for my twenty. lonely football pitches, sad greenhouses, trains escaping to everywhere but here. rivets of rain cross blank, grey roads - shaken good. green gas towers, flow charts in reflection. bored, cold, interrupted by neighbours, desperate to save religion. there ain't no jesus, honey. no comfort there. riding through serious suburbia, families doped on jubilees and football. i'm trying not to care, trying to hold my position, struggling. fighting off my angry man, promised to stay good, stay well. promised that my dark cloud had gone, nothing but april skies. hard to do it, to keep on keeping on amidst the rabbit hutches, exhausts and smell of violence. hard to do right. hard to do good. promised not to give in, promised to stay outside, promised you nothing.

comeback kid
here comes the kid
ready for comeback
back in three halves
three shakes, three lambs
stooled up so high
a creak on his thighbone
he’s back in black leather
and thrifty with quiff
and the radio says:
let’s do this for all those who rocked.
the boys from the back
with their fingers of wonder
picking their way
through the old strings of life
here comes the kid
up there where he started
bringing so much
back from his grave
and the radio says:
it’s 1968 and it’s okay.


back to text | back to top