Proximity

It’s about changes in space and lengthening time.

It’s about doors that fail to open and mis-directed signs.

It’s pine cones in pockets just to fill the void.

Taking breaks around the building, just to check the noise.

It’s about altering affectations in the hope of better ways

But failing at the first and leaving overplayed.

It’s when the exit sign flickers, and reflects below the rake

When I’m sat with long exposures and documenting tape.

It’s about sweeping circular routes for pointless cups of tea.

About a secret on a post-it I’d rather no one see.

It’s closeness in the first place and distance in the last.

Nothings that turn to episodes and slip into the dark.

It’s about rushing and not stopping until it’s too far late

And the marble stairs are empty because I failed to wait.

Corn Doll

Girl in black, boy in blue.
She Felt and he never knew.

There was such a lot she said,
Thinking talking would turn it into sense.

But words only made a corn doll.
And a fool.

You Could Change Space, I Could Not

If I inhabit your space

And paste myself over the walls, like dust and glue,

Would you come home?

As I unravel the bandages,

That hold the most important parts together,

Could you please turn away?

I don’t want you to see this.

I don’t think anyone should see this.

The words can come like modern mantras,

Propelling me through the wasted day.

But they don’t consult with the actions.

Separate script and mime.

I am sorry.

Tell me it has all been worth the mess and it will stop.

I am sorry

That I couldn’t do it better than this.

End Song

This is not your story and I am not your friend,
We can construct meanings from traced etchings
Or we could just pretend.
I won’t tell you of heroes that never fell to fault.
I won’t weave a yarn from frayed endings,
All I have is circling salt.
Perhaps I’ll sit inside it and look out at the sands,
And you can sit beside me,
Whilst I unmake our plans.
Don’t think that we were lovers, we weren’t even known.
I think i need to see the edge,
Where swan’s songs chime alone.
You could watch me as I set out; you could turn away and hear
My cry as I let it out,
That fills my distance to the pier.
Before tide, sweep smudged circles; now mixed with sanded dust.
Reform them to make your fortune,
Whilst my riches wear to rust.
Oh, but this is not yours or even mine,
This is just a moment,
Beats of inevitable rhyme.
So don’t think this is for or of you,
You are a shadow on a shore.
You are not and cannot
Reach me anymore.

The Lady in Blue

“And the clock”, said the Clockmaker, “shall chime the days,
And the bells will ring out to sea.
And the men at arms will fall away
When the wars write their own decrees.
And the Woman in Blue shall sing her last
As her sailor knows not his own sails.
And she’ll pack up her birds in cages shut fast,
And ask again to ring out the bells.
And time will take our freedom away,
As though it were a door made of locks;
Each turn of a key a new minute drawn,
And each cog a tick-followed-tock.”

And the Lady in Blue knew the truth
As soon as the Clockmaker said
That the clock, oh the clock, will render the days,
Will craft the sunrises from lead.

So she took up her birds and descended the stairs
To a chamber below ocean rock.
She plucked all their feathers and cut off her hair,
And set one thousand keys to their locks.
And with all the down and the hair from her head
She carpeted the walls and the floor.
She feathered cell, feathered not bed,
Her sailor turned the keys tight in the door.
And so, the ticking from the Clockmaker’s hands
Resounded across the shores.
But the Lady in Blue, deep beneath the sands,
Could hear none but her birds aching calls.

And so, with no time, no tick-followed-tock,
The Lady in Blue was set free.
Freed from the minutes – made free by the locks,
Keys spread across fathoms of seas.

Some Words

Silver threads
Scissors
Holding on tight
Banisters
Tower
Brass
Half
Light
Top
White birds
Suspension
Toes
Prickling hairs
Just too cold
Buried rivets
Upside
Down
Foundation stones
Feeling cracks
Marble
Eggs
Smashing floors
Height
Decision
Made

The Great and Unsettling Adventures of Little Lizzie Literature: Part One

Once upon a left handed argument, Little Lizzie Literature decided to take her bread and jam upon the southwards side of the Search-lit Sofa Sea. The Times had taken their toll on her paper pulp skin and the roaming light intermittently illuminated the dried up edges round her little written nose.
She munched her meal as the lighthouse span its head, accruing a most circumnavagatory view of the landscape. The jam was strained from the pulp of Pickwick Pears, which grew on the branches of the Dickens trees, found in Library Lagoon. Their flavour particularly full of character and cockney aromas.
The Sofa Sea undulated in a most somnambulant fashion – sending Little Lizzie Literature off to sleep in a beating of a bibliography eyelid, wedged precariously between a recliner and a beanbag. The Sofa Sea was now contributed to by the unfortunately named Stray Fluff Leakages – which had begun to descend from the Extra Stuffing Heights after the Great Rearrangement of the Second Sitting. The Ocean, once pure of all alternative seating plans and renowned for its two and three-seater clarity, was a hotch potch of cushioned intruders. Sofamen sometimes had to wait for days before a catch took hold of their lines and the effect on throw-cushion fish stocks was untenable.
So Little Lizzie Literature slept and ruffled her pages gently in her slumber, unaware of her predicament as she slipped down the back of inaccurately referred to Sofa Sea. Little Lizzie Literature bumped her paper-bodied way downwards until she rested gently on the bottom - atop a layer of biscuit crumb sand (and narrowly avoiding a stubbornly positioned depositation of forgotten-penny choral). She slept there until an uncompromisingly bristled hairbrush crab prickled it’s was across her chest, causing several of her pages to turn.
Little Lizzie Literature had been informed most vociferously by Old Grandma Gallstones that those who fall down the back of the Sofa Sea do not return unaltered by their experiences, if the do in fact return at all. The Maple Syrup Men travelling from the Great Rock Candy Mountain swore blind as a sugar rush that the Weave Witch of Worsted kept her lair company down there. And her lair was not to be reckoned with.
But Little Lizzie Literature was not a fluttery binding of pages. She had a belly full of bread and the hard-back spine of a dictionary. Little Lizzie Literature took a deep goose feather breath and set off into the darkness of the bottom of the Sofa Sea….

Tea Set

“Please do come round for tea” said She to He.
They sat in tiled and painted spaces and considered each other’s faces.
He was the carved frescoes lost heroes.
She, the painted and gilt goddess on the ceiling –
Tempting Fate to a snake-bite bed.
They sipped coloured liquids,
The lightshades of stained glasses above His head.
Their hands brushed over fumblings for silver spoons.
And the clink of bone china made etchings on their soundscape.
They had entire histories described for them upon the walls.
But He paid no heed to prior mishaps in relief.
They sipped until Her finest set was dry.
She swept it to the floor
Where it expanded in a flurry of footprint clouds.
She scooped the settling dust and softly blew it into His eyes.
The tea-set powder burned and stung.
He flung his bones against the marble scenes protruding at his spine.
Smothering moments of woe and war.
Of love and lies picked out in compacted debris.
She pressed in and kissed Him once and twice together.
Cold touches of brittle cartilage
That made his blood run dry -
Like the finished tea upon the floor.
They were swallowed by ceramic.
Light span through tinted glass to illuminate Their stone set faces -
Locked in a kiss of composite shells.
Trapped in calcium compounds.
Wrung out leaves remained upon the terracotta tiles.
Perhaps they spelt the shape of misfortune.
Or desire and loneliness combined.
A ribbon of text inscribed itself about Their heads
A Roman-fonted message to those taking tea unchecked:
"And the Thirsty crushed beneath their weight to stone.
And the china turned to china what was bone. "

Ramage and Bean

Ramage and Bean
Provided the scene
From which their story was told.
They gave us the setting –
A place suffocating
In a god, at the cost of it’s souls.

Ramage was the keeper
Of the Princely Sleeper –
Locked in the tower above.
Bean was his lover,
Kept tight undercover.
Hands tight through the skin of a glove.

When the boy fell to dream,
Ramage would shine a beam
Of light to the gate-lodge sill.
Bean would come to the ledge,
Drop down to the hedge
And progress, led on by his will.

Bean would then climb the stairs
To the tower, unaware
Of the danger he faced each night.
For in love one is blind
And he left behind
His reason in place of his light.

They would meet in the chamber,
As the fires turned to embers.
As wood turned to ash in the night.
There they’d embrace,
The other’s kisses they’d chase
And set their humours alight.

So entranced they would be,
That they failed to see
The boy, supposed sleeping next door.
He’d creep out of bed,
As hushed as he dead,
And sneak a look through the crack near the floor.

The boy had been preached,
To a god he’d beseeched
To forgive his sins great and small.
He knew what he saw,
Through the crack near the floor,
A sin – the worst if them all.

And so, Bean and Ramage,
Unaware, undisparaged,
Continued to meet by the stars.
They hushed their kisses,
Kept quiet hearts wishes,
Only stole day lit looks from afar.

One night while they met,
The Boy Prince crept
From his bed and down the back stair.
Along torch lit galleries,
Sweat drenched and heart hammering
With the weight of his God-given care.

The boy told the King,
Who sent bells to ring.
Sent the hounds to smell out the sin.
They were found in the tower,
And overwhelmed by the power
Of men scared of the passions within.

Ramage and Bean,
Closed down their scene -
They were hung at the first light of dawn.
Their ropes swung side-by-side.
Bodies flung to the tide.
Their love caused their curtain to fall.

No applause for this tale,
No “Lights up!” no hails
For performances beautifully played.
For this God fears the might
Of loves forced to the night.
He’d rather an empty, cold stage.

Geography

Bending backs over washboards. Emily watched as They were lined up in the courtyard to have their wings clipped. Some of the girls struggled against the grip of the Grounds-men. The boys seemed to have been broken long ago. Faces sallow like hollow skins on greengages. The man with the clippers had hands covered in scars, snips and remnants from more resistant works. Feathers were strewn over the cobbles, blood in an abattoir.
The Picker-boys would be let in to collect them later. The down feathers would be separated from the ones with strong spines and sold for the pillows of rich men’s beds. Perhaps to be reunited with their owners in moments of bought lust. There were dealers for the large feathers who would distribute the produce to quill makers, dressmakers, alchemists, other merchants and the occasional architect. The prices would be high, and not in gold.

Bells chime for passing hours like empty mouths at the table, little bird tongues poking to caterpillar suppers. Tower scratches the skin of old skies and lets it bleed to night. Emily watches until the clippers stop biting and They are lead back to their chambers. And the walls stop echoing the snip-snuck sound of deadened flight.

Emily woke from the silk-stocking reverie and into the sharp cold evening, a bat in a washhouse. Off the wall she dropped and down into the alley between the East and West Houses. Billowing cloak and the noise of velvet in air.

String songs run around the valley-crevices of her ears. Chasing others tails and singing folk prayers of the night before. She could follow them to the back of the library and through the pages of old geography books - swallow the scribbles from the margins of maps. And change full stops round so they make a constellation sky on her forearm. Ready for some clouded figure to trace with a beetle-shell finger. Over-long and wheezing a little eulogy of bending calcium before it cracks into a million oily surfaced fragments over her sky. All the while the other hand tightly round her wrist, whitening the skin.

Emily fell away into the darkness, moving quickly down the alley. There was a drop into the lower quarter ahead. A steep precipice over fifty feet that divided the city between the Winged district and the Soil Half, titles now redundant after everything had turned. Emily ran and leaped off the edge into the sky. For a moment the lower city swung beneath her in a gasp of cold night air, laced with the heavy scents of other peoples evening cook pots. Then a flash of white feathers and she was away and up, scooped by the air itself and welcomed to the vast canvas of stars above her.

The They stays in her head like a handful of lead and her eyes follow the lights of some unwashed hand that holds a handful of her grandmother’s feathers. The feathers that keep her up and that bring Them plummeting to the ground. They feed the bellies of the dead with their feathers of lead and take her by the neck to the place of beginning and first flight. The tower that steals time from her back hour by hour and turns milky-eyes sour, the curdling skin peels and falls to the ground from a height. And Emily breathes away the string songs and her white wings are swallowed by the night.