Videograms
Hitchhiker’s
Guide
Take a piece
of root ginger, put it with the water in a pan and boil it, then you make
your tea with the water. She’d made his thermos for him when he left
home in the small hours. She always did that.
Underground Rider
A bottle, rolling
drunk, missed its stop again. Terminates at Modern, says the Northern
Line brightly to itself.
Blues and Stout
Big plywood quavers,
a treble clef, a crescent – or actually a senescent moon – spraypainted
silver and aged to a soft oxide grey. From the stage, scarcely a foot
high, you could easily reach up and swing on a star.
Good Luck Child
You walked like
a millionaire. There was no-one there like you, not there or anywhere
else. I knew from the second I looked at you first and you smiled like
the sun’s first child.
Open Up the Doors
Second bell from
the top, she’d said. Up the scuffed shared stairs they shared were
friends we hadn’t seen since the good times, and some we’d never
seen before, and some we’d never see again, sat in their orbits on
the floor, gravitating to the wine.
Drinking Water
Whichever way
she chose, going left or right or keeping straight ahead, each turning
took her to the same thought – of a warm breeze, of a buddy, of an
arm going round a poplar’s shaking shoulder.
Thank You, Henry
The mouth filled
with caterpillars momentarily shut and paused, spoke some smoke, then
spat a few more wings into the heap of disjected moth components. Stunning
itself by the pool, a retread bulged with atmospheric pleasure.
Dodge
“How many
times do you think I’ve been the fool? And I could do it all again”
– pointing with his ear across the bar – “for her.”
There was only the lace left at the end of his pint. “God knows,
you can’t judge by what’s on the jukebox.”
Uptomystic
We cycled a root-riddled
track, spread ourselves out in the clearing, with bracken uncurling at
the foot of a ruined oak. We’d lost all we had to lose, for the time
being.
Before You Fall
He strapped himself
in behind the Fender and turned the ignition, then looked down along the
neck for a while, for a long while, where the chords had eroded the finish.
Howling Wolf
Great darkness
lies under there all afternoon with one eye open, on a bed of dead needles
and under the cover of the living, more like stone than flesh.
Out Into the Light
Then a human
was an object of mockery, and it became a crime to remain silent in their
presence and not emit the jabberings of submission.
Grey Cat and the Blackbird
In petallic bloomlight, among thorny nightshade, Daisy and Violet and Iris await the outcome.
