1. |
Cutlery
00:49
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Placed plates and salt shakers just where they should be. Forgetfully laid too many sets of cutlery.
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2. |
Next Cassette
02:42
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Shallow morning creeps up lawns, falls round corners and stalls, breathes a sigh of rising vapour. The rear windscreen tries its best to forget the things we etched with freezing fingers in the dark – a wreath to lead this procession through the sleepy streets, dragged past the blocks by a fast dashboard clock. That our collected wist could summon from the mist some wrong turn that wasn’t there before. Perfectly positioned cranes brazenly repeat the claim that it’s not their jurisdiction to lift the frontages away / provide horizons that scroll away like lists of things to do today. Let the dented grille keep growling at some place it’s never been. Select the next cassette to get chewed up by the machine. Or gather up the paper cups, crushed from clutching on too tight, lest we feign left but swerve right.
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3. |
Unnatural Stances
02:55
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Through a thin pane of shaking glass, the butterflies hear you arrive with your unruly class and, to keep them in line, claim I might not invite you back next year. But it’s fine. Besides, I fixed all the porcupine spines that they broke last time and reintroduced the snow goose that I know you liked. You used to say it was creepy parading past the trophy heads – it almost felt like being watched. Now the buffalo rolls his eyes as you go to stroke his nose and I say it’s alright. And the hawk holds her wings in an unsubtle hint to do something, anything. But I might just stand lifeless right here by the fallow deer – matching unnatural stances and looks of untameable fear. Until, faced with raised hands for a skua feather souvenir, I know I’ve let hometime draw too near.
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4. |
So Absorbed
01:52
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Autumn always explodes in slow motion strobes. From behind briery spires they set the foliage aglow and wait for dusk as the rush hour makes a fuss and works out where to go. There, held in suspense like a chorus lead-in breve, I’m all shivers in short sleeves. You’re all backlight and silhouette. Everything at arms length. Faced away from the jaws of a yawning day. So absorbed in the glare of the aquarium lunette you might have been the other side. Or before the teal gleam of a dreaming drinks machine. I’m all shivers in short sleeves. You’re all backlight and silhouette.
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5. |
Future Ruins
01:51
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Forced shut the doors on falling books and school sports awards. The back seat belts were hardly stretched and the TV set had the parcel shelf to itself. Steered clear as creepers felt for flaws in steadfast walls and bedroom beacons in the evening – future ruins wiser coasted by. How hillside teems with indecisive headlight beams. How pylons stride towards and disappear behind. Paused on the drive like all the nice things tried but left on shelves. The torch, the unpacked tent, a sieve – really grown up things to run away from home with.
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6. |
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The first great ravine tamed between precipices of blizzard blasted peaks. A good strong design from pioneering times to breach deathly steep slopes on either side. Snowy road to snowy road, safely over glacial flows below, foxes follow the tyre tracks of timber trucks. Oh, to go where giant hips and shoulders lie beneath the patchwork of pitch pines and crimson heath, and huge Vs of geese secure the seams with loose threads tied to their necks and feet. Under load, the girders groan and long to let go, could it be so. Thus spoke the crucial screw: “Would that I could use the excuse that too much thunderous rumbling shook me loose. And turning restlessly in my slumber I might plummet to the earth below.”
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7. |
Moon News
01:01
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And all of this for somebody else’s memories.
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8. |
No Teeth Marks
02:57
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I guess I thought it should take more than a final cup of coffee and an unguarded front door. More like a cougar and a mountain goat, heading for a ledge, at each other’s throats. But there are no teeth marks, no trouble, no sign of a struggle. The dressing table waits, prepared, to get dragged across the landing and thrown down the stairs. But the bannisters remain intact and a jar of dying snowdrops stands there crying out to be smashed. For there are no teeth marks, no trouble, no sign of a struggle. I expect our friends and families will be on hand and understanding, and I’ll be disappointed to report that the knives stayed safely tucked up in their drawer. And the weather, ever contrary, meets my barely flaring temper with a pleasant morning breeze. What am I supposed to do with this?
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9. |
Bone White Paint
03:11
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Passers by stopped their cars, let their kids run to the fence to frown down to the shale coast below. Of all the photos of the whale that lay there that day, they would later say they could not convey the scale or the gunmetal grey. It took months to strip the flesh and a team of ten to dig the trench and bury what was left. Twenty years spent sound asleep as birthday parties restlessly outgrew their afternoons. The phone rang off in the workshop. The message left described a kind of skeleton for a skeleton, the curvature of the spine, reassembled in permanent ascent, aloof of definite expression on what her resurrection meant. Pride of place, the museum gates, a popular pedestrian commuter route. Dinner dates and business meetings all started late, saying “I couldn’t tear myself away”. In the summer, after hours, there’s a ladder and a coat of bone white paint, and the swells in the traffic, two blocks over, almost sound like waves.
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10. |
New Moons
02:51
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In front of gathering clouds, you curtsy for the tilted, out of focus obituaries of certain haircuts, and commit cold promises to unearthly hues of empty car parks, wearing clothes you can’t outgrow. Under all those roofs [in the bars and schools] they are working hard on ways to reach new moons. And they’ll crowd around screens and struggle fiercely for the front seats, leaving desks and tills unmanned. And they’ll sit outside and scan the skyline for a distant plume of smoke. Oh, I plan to send terrifying messages in lightning like trembling old-fashioned handwriting. So, fold up your folding chair and lower your loaded stare – there’s nothing but dark and dust out there. I swear that the drive home knowing that your life’s work takes longer than a life’s worth must really hurt, with the leaves changing colour and stuff.
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