11.01
Northbound, the song of the rails
And footie fans
Bright tongue-punch of tamarind –
I’d go miles for pani puri
New builds on brownfields
Fennel glades, teazels, finches
Unhomed
Kestrel’s cliff scraped clean of roots
Bloody cranesbill
Street food, not sawdust
In the covered market; ghosts…
Skinned hares, white tripes
Kittiwakes scream from the bridge
No-one wants a terraced house
Everyone is fine
Talking to thin air these days –
Pods. Buds. Our blue teeth.
Shop fronts like cast shells
Waiting for crabs
Guts hanging out
Sliding doors wedged open
Cataract windows
The Laing’s a drum, deaf with rain
Paintings sign to each other
Bloodlust and faith
Objects in oils and suspense
Gilt-framed
Gulls after a lightning strike –
The Age Concern social group
Do you paint? Used to.
But the girl I showed them to
Never loved me back.
Sap green
Scorched earth
Where you see a storm
I see a girl tucking in
To a ham sandwich
Things, alone in their thingness
But, a field of attention
Smashed rainbow
The old snooker hall windows
Be Gay, Do Crime
Three white clouds; the blossom trees
Next to Manors car park
Tall cakes, short coffees
In your head, they’re still fighting –
This cafe has changed
The basic anatomy
Of buildings eludes my pen
I am surprised
By the skyline we worked for;
Its absences
Ten years in the mirror
That body is lost to me
The hotel shower –
Skylight in a downpour
Headful of pictures
Looks like she ate all the pies
Exhibition in a bathtub
Close to shame
Wouldn’t do that one
(After grabbing)
Shit on the pigeon netting
Echoes fall down Dog Leap Stairs
Cities are dreams
People too are mostly dreams,
New builds on goldfields
The waters of Tyne…
They run between me and me
Continuing experiments with renga, though this doesn’t really count as not many people believe a single poet can write a renga – you need at least one other person with whom to collaborate. Let’s say this is me collaborating with the ghosts of former selves as I take a writing day around Newcastle, where I lived and worked for twelve years.
I’ve now lived in Hartlepool longer than I lived in Newcastle, but of course with it being just up the road it’s still very current for me, so the disconnect is not as strong as I might find going back to other old haunts in search of psychogeography. I filled half an old journal with sense impressions and random free writes over the day, then pulled these fragments out. Like emptying your pockets after a foraging walk.
Kirsten Luckins 
Really poignant. Not too sure looking back is a good for the heart. But your images are very evocative . How did you feel after completing it? Xxx
Fine 🙂 It’s an exercise in form, more than anything; interesting to experiment with how about 15 pages of original free-writing can condense into such a constrained shape.