Game traces

The photographs were taken at Coughton Court in Warwickshire, home of the Throckmortons, a one time Recusant family with connections to the Gunpowder Plot. 

The room guide told me the key was left over from a children's treasure hunt (the family still live in a wing of the house and make use of the rest out of hours). 

Bus note 55

Hail fall making noise
in straight white lines
        and people start
        in their seats
like children wide-eyed
and briefly charming.
        A proper boy says,
Look, the sky is going blue.
        Well, showers end.
Eyes soon get smaller.
        On, my own (temp.) loves,
        up Three Shires Oak Road
        to various elsewheres.

Washing song

rain says nothing

old oh hole mouth
hid behind
looked after face

would you be
bright clean again

Bus note 54

        Getting old
        with each other:
        mother and son.
Sat together,
the same face on.
        Him dressed down
        and her dolled up
        (crayoned lips).
Neither of them
saying much.
        A picture.

Friedrichshain

Bus note 53

Today’s dry with shadow trees

        on red brick

        on white stucco.

In a friend’s delicate throat

something is growing.

        Morning. A nakedness.

An HB pencil in hand.

        Write in careful letters:

        Fuck off, bloom.

Silvery scratches in broken-up light.

Portrait 2

                   draws up
               her mouthful
                             of long hair

     Hunched, she            
                              She leans out to

          You're there with stewed meat on blue spoon.

                    DINNER, she says.

    a thumbed table

              a bitten hand

           a chewed film


   crashed    wants     said     loud

         throat     graze


          black long
               long hair

           smile razors moderated world

                                     key scratches

    eyes kick in doors
               black hair and eyes

                 from where
   white zig zag lines
              shoot out from where
        her chair presences

subject ball
   between us goes
  to and fro

        She says, BALL.

           cackle splits and cracks

       a sideways


                 Fits


            The names she's given

     

Bus note 52

        After Warley Woods
the girl sat up back
closes her phone.
        Wash of tears
as if you (you/I)
could dip a hand
into her face:
a bruised pool.
        Noiseless.
Look about your person
(second/first)
for some piece of pity.
        Now. Now.
        Nothing there.

Portrait 1

    puts his hand on my head
           says, "Head".

    a   large   hand

           Things come in parts or
                        told wholes.

   do up his belt
        says, "Thank you".         Laughs

           (remember, not yours for the getting)

         In that broad mouth
             a    few    thin    delicate    teeth
           hung on         eerie filaments

        not getting the what
 but holding a feel of

say a square with a light on

            shapes that are nice
        have a here and there smell
                                   a taste

            hand in your pocket
                  a pinched lapel

         (comic tenderness)

          Outside the Bowling Alley
       he now shouts, "Car horn".

                    All join in.

             Queries, managed chat,
                  planned fun:
                      all goes off
                 in vanishing gas.

             all gone       Laughs