1. |
For A Turnstile
03:41
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I hear a sound from round the corner
People have flocked across the foyer
A drunk man starting up an altercation
With a library user
Ripped from the user by security
Flung out in threats, taunts and gestures
The angered victim left recovering with concerned onlookers
One of whom posits an answer:
"Turnstiles! To protect the space from abusers!"
I catch it twice but sort of tentative,
Then repeated a lot surer:
"We need some sort of turnstile system!
Entrance retracted from non-members! Turnstiles!"
Drunks rain down, collapsing on us,
Daring absurdities out of us
Since when was someone's member status
A sign of benign inner purpose?
They're vetted only for names and address
Tabs kept only on the books they've debted
And we're not a Tube station
Or a public lavatory
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2. |
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I was digging holes in a plot of soil,
Rooting out tangleweed.
She had found a frog, was herding it about me
Was dribbling it between her feet.
And it let off a noise – shrill, loud, sustained –
About as far from a 'ribbit' as a tin whistle a bassoon,
She weaved it shrieking round a gauntlet of clump grass and thistle
And I felt sick to see the glee on her face, so I acted
By scaring her away with a shuffle of my foot,
Scooping the harassed amphibian on my spade.
I tossed it into a nearby bush
And left it up to God.
Then I moved from tangleweed, started on Alpinum seeds,
Then she caught a bird for me.
I think it was a blue tit –
Pale breasted, round, petite –
Specks of blood on its feathers.
She dropped it on my lavenders,
Where it lay near-motionless.
Only on closer inspection
Did I notice its small, round beak
Opening and closing weakly – very quiet.
She had crushed its throat in her jaws,
Rendering throat useless as an air duct
Which meant that the blue tit was suffocating,
While she, in fascination, looked,
And I found this quite distressing.
So I trod as hard as I could on the blue tit's head.
A sort of mercy killing – a quicker death.
And though it took two stomps to crush it dead,
My hope is it pipped suffocation.
Because that was the intention.
I went black inside, feeling pretty sordid
The blue tit was suffocating. It made my day morbid.
So I went back inside and had a cup of tea.
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3. |
Cathedral
03:19
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A man is spying on his old house
In the city's ruins where a bypass carves out
A remembered hillside; where St. Mary's RC
Has been bulldozed; where the blocks of flats
And housing estates, where he'd meet up
With his old mates, have since become
Bordered off by green fences
Locked behind green metal gates
There are spaces that were once navigable
Now just familiar. Under the ring-road,
Twists and dips splintered, disfigured
Into treacherous configurations.
A house-side displaying a jolly Santa –
The bizarre slogan (always was)
That he invariably shops in Hillfields –
Near where the man is spying on his old house,
Listening to old songs through his earphones
And taking some heart from rubble-conquering icons:
A Philips shop and a Ford dealer.
Recreating at the corners of his eyes
And being mournful in the soft and pleasant ways.
Pacing Vine Street. Being inconspicuous.
Collecting a glimpse, with each pass, of that old house,
Whose walls have been pebble-dashed since he moved out.
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4. |
Foxes
03:29
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I wish I wasn't here, but awake
In the middle of the night
Listening to what shouldn't be a fox
Cat played backwards
Jeered by tropical birds
Through a snout
Shouldn't be a fox.
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Language of Prairie Dogs Manchester, UK
If music journalists are failed musicians, then what does that make us? We are failed musicians AND failed music journalists:
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