But a dream

Through the toy vocoder
little girl from next door
    merrily
    merrily
    merrily
    merrily
voice made low and bent
inhuman for a while

Fag smoke curls in from window

We're in bed laughing
in part
afraid

Not late
but dark

Bus note 42

Lose work face on the bus.
        Drop down to distance somewhere.
All my strangers here:
some go to own-shaped houses;
        others hold late work faces
        in those hands steadied up.
Go small as can be. Little animal
with sleep's softness creeping.

A figure

Bus note 41

        Small boy bites into burger
        with his stare on.
The scan: I'm a 6 ft monster now.
        Give a smile but
there's no smile back.
        He turns to Mum and Dad
        with their long noses,
        patient near-angelic eyes.
Subject to one another. Clicking in.
        The boy to me again
        pulls hat over face
        to be not looking.
City Road soon and time.

The Last Chapel Service

Everything is made of water says children

Passing Oundle  
Nene got swollen and bled all over

Some of the water won't move
in place (like the minister's hair)

Old women's voices mostly
sing "All that I am"
and I stop myself crying

scratch out
pretend heart

Sermon comes out on paper and flutters off

Tony does the gospel reading to be heard
with Islington traces

fenny revenge unsticking things

trembled concrete

floor warps

thin gloss
paint tears
and thin
dark etching
spider cracks

Jesus in pictures   All creatures
a donkey a cow a goose and a sheep

plain white blind remembering
stained glass     dimensionless

hardly there and wonderful

The odd brother says, "They set out
the pegs carefully for each thought".

Five feet of sellotaped canes for
orange feather duster
that is tenderness

Outside blue is more than any arrangements
going up and up and up

Dispossession

Strewn clouds    some
full    others feathered
going grey

uncoordinated
very slow
danced in

Bus note 40

Slow. Slow. A crawl.
Slow. Slow. Slow
down the Smallbrook Queensway.
        Wet long mass of tarmac
        with tail light streaks: blood orange.
Dusty from inside the nutter's radio:
I just don't know what to do with myself.
        He wears red and black rugby socks.
Home's a long way from the Holloway Circus
after being sleeted on for a bastard hour.
        Slow. Slow. Slow.
Writing with all
the angry cars about.

Fenland

 

These shots were taken in and around Thorney, a village in Cambridgeshire, between Christmas and the New Year.  I've visited often but couldn't say I know the place. It keeps itself foreign. 

This is where most of the sky in the country is. They've been gathering it up very quietly for some time.

Bus note 39

        Sitting the wrong way on bus.

        Hagley Rd going off from this point

then Broad St where with evening come

explosive coloured vomit patches
to be covered in the whitest drift.

        Pull up at the new library,

        where once I was to work,

        very big, gold topped and empty.