1. |
||||
|
Minion
This thundering volume
people tight in the economy
carving out career paths, selling their skin
bound like wire, heart race, heat and 11 hour days.
The bird flight beneath the bridge, a gull
the huge swollen Thames tide licking at the steps
I catch the occasional sky, glance up
look
see
Venus is still there.
It's young men mostly
tired eyes
raking from the filthy streets
commission
of other people's insubstantial shelter.
Lungs undone, the air in between the chase
of the road and the coming night time
holding bunches of keys at the steering wheel
You slam the car door
you have a new coat
you say to yourself that
your job is never the same thing every day
you like working with people
you like working out and about
that I can contact you on your mobile
from 8 am til 9 at night.
We see, flat viewing —
a picture frame, family photos, kitchen things
plasma TV, a drinks shelf, different shaped glasses.
Next — one family in 2 box rooms
3 toddlers (small shoes lined up in the bedroom)
close up to the TV
and the landlord arriving
just as we are leaving.
Everybody owns nobody owns anything
people the world over
hocking their teeth to pay the rent
the market cushioned in casual clothes here.
The land and life that is stolen
and sold back.
That you are a seller.
Step out of the car
the children are clapping
the children are clapping and singing
bags on their backs
all their lives ahead of them.
|
||||
2. |
||||
|
The Apple Store
This fawning over thin things svelte, glowing, the hyper colour
real-world-beauty to flick at, what's the verb for that motion
moving things on a touch screen with your fingers?
The shimmering mirage in this temple to the age of more and more
born by young hands dulled over the motherboards of this endless
consumption; shaving the aluminium off the edge of the apple logo
they strung suicide nets up after 9 jumps in the space of 3 months
Shenzhen
Guangdong province
north of Hong Kong
where
manufactured poverty assembles the fetish that
pretty young things can sling in a bag — so free, so easy
media making, spirit breaking, collapsing of the deep soul into a race
for new models Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett Packard and on and on
nausea and on and on and on:
93 million iphones
40 million ipads
38 million ipods
17 million computers
in one year
Here, bound in to long working hours and electrical hum
sales team techies are saying the same things over —
RAM memory processors
I can't tell you
this empty sorrow
the heavy drag for how the joy could be,
unfettered by this show of loss.
|
||||
3. |
Blood test - Bell Lungs
01:52
|
|||
|
Blood test
Here we are this airless tower
airless and vacuum, the forces
made mute at the doorways and the windows
the spirits make it in
on the soles of our shoes, soil, maybe
in the occasional song.
Fourth floor funnel
the corridors twist and corner
old lino, the plastic seating that
scrapes on the flooring making marks
the blue walls, all those litres and litres of paint.
Everybody’s arm outstretched on the same
cushioning, a piece of withered couch-roll
unchanged between elbows
the tie of the tourniquet
the readying vein.
The LED summons, the call
that comes from behind the curtain
and back to back the sound
of glass vials filling, O and AO
attached, collecting, falling into trays.
We go in
one after the other after another
pale nurse breaking out needle after needle
drawing and drawing, sealing plastic lab bags
arm after arm
vein after vein
tiny strip lit cubicle.
It’s something specific sickness, sickly this
particular over and over, this particular
again and again
hour after hour.
|
||||
4. |
||||
|
Chance encounter
I left the baking city
the train plunging into thick sea fog
and at the end of the line, no brakes
slipping chain, rode the perimeter fence
that marks the land stolen
from the shoreline
forbidden
in blue print
Weekend permitted
the barriers raised
stick to the path
spent shells or munitions
to be left unhandled
between the firing ranges
everywhere was hawthorn and
everywhere it was all in flower
I made it to the Wakering Stairs
where the sea pulls away for miles
seeping over the mudflats, then
the coast path that bends to Southend
where the weekend had swollen in
small town, the front smelling
of chip fat and sugar
It was busy, people taking
rides under bassy speakers
and flashing lights the colour
of boiled sweets
I walked the pier, a mile and a quarter
stretching into the mist, just the sound
of those wooden boards over the waves
that were deep and deepening
Made a chance encounter
by the cafeteria where the skeleton
ceases and there’s only water rocking
at its frame — man from Colombia
who had run the length of the pier out
and, inspired, I readied myself
to join him running it back
Effortless in his skin, soft pacing
light in his steps he made easy
conversation even as I had to dig in
thinking — the land in sight —
I might not make it
Our ending, pleased beaming
a brief farewell, an embrace —
his photo of me staggering
to the finish, he tripped off
still running, disappeared
into the promenade crowds
calling back
You know —
you have to do something
to remember each day by
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
In the Embrace
The clock that is killing us
that is driving us all asunder
School runs and rush hours
mullen mouthpieces
race and racing.
Lunch break and us locked
in conversation headlights —
all Question/Answer, a nervous tick
gritted-smiling in that talk-snare
while the heart cloaks itself
against the barren territory.
Tears strike upwards —
the shock of slowing to sensation again
all the unfelt of daily steel and slate
and in those after hours
everything on the outside
laugh like a hyena
grimace in the right places
fingering text messages
hello hello at the bar
Nervous normal no room
a velocity speak keeping us apart
nothing spirit or space emergent
had a little drink about an hour ago
miming happy like you haven’t just pulled
through five days data-entry so your landlord
can holiday in the Algarve. Again.
In the embrace, warmth, tenderness
dissolving into woodland, no alarm division
weekdays and weekends, only the heat of the sun
then the sun going, only the praying heart
the things that need done, you stop when you tire
or need to eat, or when the daylight closes.
This pace within the body us all turning
in the great coherent wheel
residing in the magical
not levered out industrial discipline —
how the iron tracks came bringing timetables
unhinging the sundials, pulling us out
of the realm of the sensory.
Let’s pick apart the mechanics
the small coil and glass casing in pieces on the table
the long and the short hand
take the sand out of the hourglass.
We might fall through salt tides and run on the hill
laid down our defences
our temporary bones how they will ground
not the rapid, halted breath, high in the chest
too many days at schedule
steering us away.
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
Immigration enforcement
may you no no
crawl the darkness
crawl the corner, park up
may you no no
under this coral sky
then the light falling
turn the corner stop
the van pulling in slow
under this dark sky
us building resistance
(know that)
gathering forces
all of our
intelligence
may you no no
fat officer armoured, power-coward
crawl the dark streets van
crawl the corner park up
and up to the door
a black feather
a black beak
a claw
disorientate
collapse
forget what you came for
|
||||
7. |
Border - Lisa Fannen
01:55
|
|||
|
Border
Young woman
white underarm handbag
slip-ons with high heels she was
just taller than the counter
where he was looking at her
and at her passport
He hands her a card
says can you fill in these details
can you read it, you're German yes
are you German
do you speak German
All ten of her fingers
pushing against the plastic counter
him holding the passport between
thumb and finger, then with both hands
he says I don't think this is her
to a second passport controller
who has come to stand behind his right shoulder
I glimpse the photo
the young woman next to me
the man at my counter asking
if I’ve just come from the Czech Republic
that there are two buses they are processing
no I say, Germany
We get back on the coach
the doors close
the coach pulls away
The driver stops to recount
folk at the front say that the young woman isn't there
pointing to the seat where she’d been sitting
Ja, he said
sie haben sie verhafftet
arrested, 14, 15, 16, 17...
her bags still on the seat
the bus drives off
An older women at the front tells us all
the bus doesn't wait if you're detained —
then reaches to the seat behind her
where the young woman had been sitting
and flicks through the magazines she’d been reading
|
||||
8. |
||||
|
Spell for Malic, aged 2
Calais, July 2016
Your smile will fill every continent —
we’ll summon all the fire we can muster
to match the shine in you — stand
you will take your long legs to the south
and to the north, open lungs, your mother
tongue and all the rest come singing
from your heart muscle
Your eyes will behold all the seas
as and when you choose, how they will watch
and know and inquire, and be defiant power
staying your laughter’s breadth
Your mother’s mother, and her mother
and her mother and hers, drive you on
into any headwind, no matter the dust
or razor wire, no matter the dark tunnel
or airless crossing stowed between cargo
pulse and soil, all their bones
witness your safe journey
You will be loved by multitudes
they will come and come
everyday standing strong
wherever you tread —
feet kissing the ground
breathing all the winds in
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
Savile Harris
how suddenly out from under the smother blanket
years of buried molestation
old men, here the truth seeping out like rancid milk
we always knew
something didn't ring well, this desire stifle
the flesh assassinator church, and the state of it
and now young bodies who have taken a lifetime
to name and give voice; the courage it took
to never say a word and now say something
unlocking, reliving it in the tissues, are speaking;
brave now you like the wind
opening the lie vaults, giving of your strength
unfolding cramped wings
that this whole show break trap
that in every momentary beat
we might begin to foster
some deep, communal repair
|
||||
10. |
Chitty - Semay Wu
02:16
|
|||
|
Chitty
I recall
her small frame
resilience.
Long ninety years of life
a bit of soup, some yoghurt
soft for the old gums
and her yelling
and her resistance
and her terror.
How she was handled
lifted, washed, wiped
minimum wage haste
Watch her, they said
watch her, she bites.
I recall
the smell
roast beef and overcooked veg
piled into the blender. A grey mush
the medication crushed in, spike
served up. A napkin wedged hard
down the front of her dress at the neck.
Tired, overstretched women
their own laundry left, children to care for
between shifts, dead to themselves, shouting
dinner time, dinner time at her.
Beautiful old woman
I don’t forget
who bit the hand that fed her
and touched her how she didn’t
fucking want to be.
|
||||
11. |
||||
|
New Clear
1.
Hiroshima Nagasaki
if we all wear velvet gloves
can we put you back black box
lower you down chant
arrowtip never to target —
no target to find mankind
marching on gravel, hands up in the air
fade out/the sound of crystal clear
running water.
It’s too late
Wait — someone said something
about an icewall: 1.4 kilometers of coolant
to freeze the groundwater around the spill
leaching from a thousand hastily constructed
tanks, 355,000 tons of radioactive water
400 more washing out every day —
A lead cover falls, a candle blows out
it’s cold, it’s frantic, there were news
flashes, then no more
news flashes
then it was quiet —
just the constant, slow leak of cesium hotspots
for all the steel walls they have raised
in the sea bed round the crippled plant
collapsed at the edge of the ocean clutching at its sides
the hot, hot water pouring through its fingers.
2.
On the ocean floor, fissures where tectonic plates
are slowly yawning apart or around volcanic activity
— hydrothermal vents — extreme heat —
the water far past boiling, fathoms down molton ore seeps
making black smoker chimneys in the pitch darkness
the midnight zone.
Such force, as quake, from here
that pushed a tsunami to the shore.
3.
Silence. Doors fallen from frames. Dry brush weed in cracks. A small breeze through abandoned buildings. One woman still goes back in to feed the cats. Derelict road blocks. Shop shelves hanging empty. Children’s toys tipped on their sides. Rusting bikes, rusting cars. The Geiger counter clicking high in the grasses.
One sievert dose — radiation sickness, nausea
Five sieverts — kill you within a month
Ten sieverts — dead in weeks
The seventy three sievert tolerant robots they sent in to Fukishima, just faltering malfunction
Hot concrete, hot metal, hot air — recent reactor levels there
reading five hundred and thirty sieverts per hour.
4.
Look away, look away. History cowers guilt. Who? Gap
When? Shows us tight jawlines, jaws clenching —
Now no one saying anything
Anything at all.
My mother tells me my Uncle had said —
Er blieb dann manchmal die Nacht.
He used to pass through. In the ‘70s.
Nuclear scientist. They invited him.
On the way out to Japan.
Das hatte er damals schon gesagt —
— that they shouldn’t build it there
on a faultline —
5.
back black box
lower you down chant
mankind
hands up
fade out/the sound of crystal clear
running water
back black box
lower you down chant
mankind
hands up
fade out/the sound of crystal clear
running water
back black box
lower you down chant
mankind
hands up
fade out/the sound of crystal clear
running water
back black box
lower you down chant
mankind
hands up
fade out/the sound of crystal clear
running water
|
||||
12. |
||||
|
Renewal — Tides
Poverty —
Like the novitiate
entering the enclosure
lying prostrate
on stone floor
breathing surrender
in and out
I float in the cold
Chastity —
I am swimming under the waves
gazing entranced through tides
bright widemouthed fish
and coral waving
in the liquid glass
I am naked, I am turning
Obedience —
It is silent
I look up
just below the surface, sunlight shining
translucent through red-green weeds
I am no longer in the speaking
I do not want to speak
In the push, in the pull
|
||||
13. |
||||
|
Renewal — Sea
I speak to this moment, all sticky with salt
peeling the sea lettuce off my thighs, my feet
crystalised sand, the tide drawing in and out
like the sound of my blood, and the memory
of my mothers, and my grandmothers
that amniotic amplification, generation
after each, swimming and surfacing. I sit
and reconcile the beauty I find myself in
and all possibility, with the torn and lacking
and all that violates and binds
Say Salt sea, wide sea, open waters
open waters, salt sea, wide sea
wide water, salt sea, open
open waters, wide water, salt
|
||||
14. |
Fire - Letitia Pleiades
02:11
|
|||
|
Fire
after Chrystos
I’m licking the salt off
this beat pulsing in me
both hunger
& hope
all the freedoms hard fought for
everyone who came before me
my gratitude
I’m saying my prayers here
making my offerings
My mouth shape
the arches of your feet
trace your bones
ankles
the inside
of your thighs
breathing every
part of you deep
into me
This is play like cubs
at your armpit
at the tendon’s edge, my lips
at the soft hair & hollow
tracing a circle
at the centre
of my palm
over your nipples
hard up against my hand
like buds
You make my collapse
all fire then water
my mouth’s
drug suck & your long slow
outbreath
The light pales on your breasts
sloping to sternum
I’m pressing
into your ribcage
plunging
into your hips
holding you down
Joy
joy
rise you up
sweating
make joy with you
from the tissue in my throat
ululating tunnel
raking my fingers
down the folds of your back
leaving marks
The sun’s rising it’s dawn
I’m anchoring
into the flesh of your ass
weaving my elbows
through your
soft legs
trailing to the waters
to drink
You are fresh
the taste of ozone, blossom
the sea come in rush
making to you inside now
like a dream world/ sensate
all of my
whole hand
in you
rocking
|
||||
15. |
||||
|
Lochend
Storm
a rare wind that pulls at the willows
pushes at them, suck
opening the windows
making the houses lonesome
The buildings
The wind
It was coal fires, back greens
the local park, the local shops
1930's clad grey, people shipped
out and then shipped in to
The wind
The buildings
Old man on the street telling me
his mother raised all five children
in that house, didn’t want to own it
we’d have bought it for her
said she hoped somebody else
could raise a family in it
when she’d gone
My neighbour running in and out, slam
on his mobile, middle of the night
dropping his needles in the stairwell
The stair cleaners mopping bleach
never hear a peep out of 'naked Willie'
upstairs, sitting in front of UV rays
The women opposite
nesting their private property
we're going travelling
we're going to rent it out
put a security door on the close
in preparation
was only on a week before kids
put a brick through the glass
|
||||
16. |
||||
|
Make no bones about it
Hollow flight stems, the flotsam
hooked in the wrack and grasses
all drying in the salt wind —
gannet’s keel, sheep’s vertebrae
jaw of a mountain hair
Listen
Brittle, bring it close, we lie with it within
bending, deep in the marrow, sponge
hydrating, renewing, reshaping itself
over and over as we tread, curve, carry
feel it in your bones
Listen
Swing
dance them
settle in
Listen
The long thin Japanese chopsticks
that pick and pass the remains
patella, pelvis, scapula, sternum —
placing them upright in the urn
dispelling the myth of ‘ashes’:
here, the cremulator that grinds
the dead to powder
Listen
The top rib that dances on the breath
the bottom that fans the bellows —
and below, the heavy plumb line
a wide anchoring keystone
Listen
Hammer, anvil, stirrup, cochlea —
the small, snail spiral of the inner ear
hear the call of the rag and boneman
Listen
Femur stacks in Cambodian killing fields
Skulls of the disappeared in Chilean desert
Listen
Arnhem Land bones in Canberra warehouse
Lakota bones in Colorado Museum
Listen
Listen
Listen
|
||||
17. |
||||
|
Some white folks from Alabama on the Amtrak
It’s our 40th
we’re taking trains all over for three weeks
Our son, decided
he wanted to be a police officer
He said
Daddy, I want a badge, a gun and a car
In actual fact
they said
he said
I want a gun, a car and a badge
in that order
They said
We said
Honey —
You make sure you protect yourself first
we’ll take care of anything we need to after
|
||||
18. |
||||
|
Herman Wallace
While I was dreaming myself into this body
crawling spittle, cutting teeth, nursery school
and school milk, hot sun on plastic paddling pool
sports days, sweating tests, leaving home
While I was asking, refusing, finding
by flames rounding driftwood
on shores foaming shingle spits
or in friends’ houses, or my own
or any places I chose by train, on foot
cycling into headwind
or with the wind at my back
All of those years
For all of the years of the whole of my life
you, locked in a 6 x 9 foot cell
The majority of my life has been in a cage
The majority of my life —
I came in this cell at 31 years old man
I’m 69 now
The solitary hours
hung out of sunlight
stark depravity
your dignity blazing
I’m good. Just get me out of here.
I turned the pages of the paper
and read of your death
just three days
after your release
I peel back thick pomegranate skin
the red juice runs down my wrists
lay the seeds and pith on the ground for you
The skies they open, they open
The skies they open, they open
they open
|
||||
19. |
||||
|
After the Hillsborough final inquest verdict
For the family and friends who fought 27 years for justice
Tuesday 26th April 2016
Granular VHS, red and white strip, pitch, the typical
stadium throb, six minutes in they call off the game
the camera scanning, young folks dragging themselves
over the fencing lying on the ground breathless, the
surging crush lifting people onto the balcony like
ragdolls, it was four deep dead at the front.
And the view was clear from the surveillance terrace
but the call was for police dogs not medical support
and at 3.15pm while people were dying, Chief
Superintendant David Duckenfield lied about the
exit gate he had had opened to let people in.
The police that beat folk back as they tried to climb
and the ambulances that came but were just parked up
outside and the cops told to line up across the stadium
guided only by a terror of losing control of the crowd.
The young men hauling advertising hoardings as
stretchers They’re dying in there, they’re all dying in there
and the father on the turf with the bodies of both his
daughters on the ground by his side saying Help me,
please God, not both of them, they’re all we’ve got.
The dead on the dirty, makeshift morgue floor. The
police coroner ordering blood alcohol level checks on
all who died and the police photographer sent out to
‘gather evidence’ taking pictures of the litter at the
turnstiles.
That rapid manufacture of narrative; drunken hooligan,
the working class mob, while ruthless, institutional
self-defence buried its negligence and prejudice under
piles of systematic deceit; hundreds of police officer
statements edited of criticism or comment before
they went to the inquiry.
That one black and white photograph, people’s faces
rammed against the wire mesh, the aftermath, bent
metal railings, clothing strewn across the gaping empty,
the bereft, the broken. Those ninety six faces on the
memorial wall you run the cursor over, one short
paragraph about each life and the cause and the
approximate time of death.
That unanimous final vote. Unlawful killing. Inside the
courtroom applause, hugging, tears. And afterwards
friends and family stood together one more time
and sang.
|
||||
20. |
||||
|
Guidance — In the Dreaming
I am treading wet
tunnels Underground there are limestone lakes
I am swimming with great ease in illuminated
rivers I am floating down stream dark
like an oil painting in a coracle
the shape of a walnut shell How the
dead come to me here my dog
and now my father They come to me
in a panic of neglect that I
have forgotten to wash or feed them
or I see they are just
fine that they are busy and do not
need me any more
|
||||
21. |
||||
|
Guidance — Observation
One for sorrow, two for joy
three for a girl, four for a boy
five for silver, six for gold
seven for a story that’s never been told
They are scrying in holy wells, in mirrors, tea leaves
coffee grounds, wine sediments, in dust and flour
I am in the park. I have questions
a pair of blue Jays
are shrieking in the treetop
They are casting stones and shells, they are counting thunder
dropping wax in water, striking copper bowls
I am in the park. The following day
the Jays are separate now
and they’re silent, one in each tree
They are dowsing with rods, pendulums, observing the patterns in ash
and soot and smoke, they are reading the peat in the black house roof
I walk outside the city. Some time later
a small fledgling blue Jay fallen from its nest
is lying dead in the path
|
||||
22. |
||||
|
Guidance — As above so below
Just tipped past full moon
the fever-leash that raises
us fluid volume and song
the great revealer —
We can take knowing
from the knowing field
in this waning time
Ancient silver one
speaking us
to ourselves
within wide arcs, orbits, ellipses
Mercury conjunct Mars
Sun trine Saturn
Each aspect and vibration
fortuitous — auspicious
Listen
today may be a good day
And the outer planets
slow roll through the galaxy
how they cast us as generations
lots, straws, if we are lucky
luck
|
||||
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