Industrial lands

The assyrian's daydream lozenge

Holy city. Blast of rain. Fresh, the entrails of summer. Unrelenting lands. How many more nights in the shadow of these streets? The archangel looms in small shapes out of purple-black clouds. Silences of longing and lust. Throbbing storm. Star-scatter bulbs echoing the grey river. Smokestacks. Raw materials siloed on the banks. The reds, maroons, mixed stones. Robust iron boats for these industrial lands. Three graces in one eye corner, bitterness raw. Steps dug in local stone.

Holy city. Rain falls in sheets. Inhabitants strong like soldiers against another strike. Evening strobe. Feel closer. Get closer. Ethereal grasp, sweat it out. Heavenly touch. Stretch the spirit. Slam the spiritual stretch. The soul of the saviour etched in clouds, neon night. Apostle heavy on the banks, face clouds. Smell of incense, slow breeze.

Fingertip to glass. Froth mounts up, a welcoming froth, from the bottom of this bitter. Orange smithereens of an outside summer. In an instance, questions and answers bounce off edges into a complex static. Guinness beer mat. Carlsberg beer mats, small rips from restless hands. Pumps cistern the length of the serving zone. Signed, original prints housed in the frame. Jovial gangs gamble on the barmaid.

Thoughts are profound. Head-essays blurted out. Humidity increased, slowdown in process.

Taxi to club. Electro-morphed. Beats clasp the head mushroom. Mirrorball candescence, the night strobe. Lust flickers at these chicanes. Find the pulse, get on the slipstream. Dig into it. Focus on the segue. Heart skips, rewinds, scratches. Corona in hand, light-blue layers the crowd, bringing out the metallic of the whites. Spit bubbles up.

Under the sign, she waits, she has been waiting. Professional drive. Ear-rings glint. Myriad possibilities on the tongue. Hoping to rock reality.

"I think I've been here before...You, something about the face."

These are our streets. We are the gods. Nestled in the drinking dens. Roads snake away from the conurbation. Away from the heat, slowly, getting colder, out into moon-drenched fields. Quiet of the mountainside, somewhere there, cows and sheep hidden by hedgerows. Night-stalkers. Snaking away, bodies getting colder into rural dips and dicey bends. Flash of headlights on chevrons. Catching midges in close air, the slight flicker and loneliness of cat's eyes beaming up from tarmac.

Deep down, the stream burbles. Tributaries gathering. Shingly rock down by the heather near the hills. Desolate landscapes punctuated with telegraph poles, the snake of electricity. Harsh rock, brittle ferns, unrelenting.

Our clouds, sailing near castles, cities. Air thinning, in these heights, swirling. Experiments not botched, altogether whole. Histories built in maps, in structures designed to last.

Dirty rain pummels down, as I'm standing in the doorway of Clinton's Cards, lights moving across a pedestrianised zone. Water pushes its way among the crisp packets, chewing gum, discarded coffee cups and cigarettes. Dancing feet skip amid these plains, soggy, happy. Faces drenched in work, caught late in frenzy. Suits wrecked, downpour continues. Skies derelict. Skies taste of ash, burning rubber. Prosthetic sky.

All they speak, words, textures. Modern languages. In breaths, out of gasps. This is happening. It has happened before, slightly altered. Different mixes. Here the evening is always this way. A day's steam and grit growling over a plateaux. Dimming. Today's script failing from the eyeline as streetlights embrace the early drinkers.

The night, the flashed blur of my soles. Feet dancing, these are the colours, red into pinks. The blues of the corners, greens worming. Only option, some form of stance.

We have our constellations. I love the geology of these pathways. Our shores are musky doorways, crammed bars and starved seats. Bus ticket embedded in the Tesco bag. Mingled with sauce.

A conversation, I had, maybe after a dream, early in the morning, in the tea room, or in the late afternoon, when...

Down in the cities, in the streets, energy rumbles, in the rooms the streets are speeding up, high up above the motion,

Does the breeze of my whisper blow you away, scare you away? Do I speak in tongues? Does it make you jump?

Carved in the memory of these streets a tiny portion of the past, in the windows of the little lanes and sky caught between buildings. Footsteps retraced for one day to replay, magpies saunter.

One for sorrow. Two for joy. Come back, I don't know you, retrace the steps. If I had your memories, what would I do with them? Looking out of the window into the brightest of nights, he sits there perched on the telephone mast, flexing his wings. Mr Magpie. Rogue of destinies.

Epiphanies are moulded in the corners of this town. Search beyond the perimeter, go further. Reach into. Find. Walking among the daydream botanics, the yellows and pinks, distil the contours, buried in the saunter of those plains. Slip into fields... broken fields... harvested deep, deciduous green, memory safe, icy torch, the scraps of flimsy hours, solvent hope.

The square is orange, bricked houses at rectangles, sectioned from traffic, opposite the house, rooftops distorted, hidden by blooming oaks and chestnut, mint greens, reach down, sucked up by road on the other side, in the middle, 'no ball games', another stretching orange wall.

Holy city. Wind rushes. The drinkers are going home, late at night, early in the morning. Leaving the town in droves, erasing the week. Purple sky of city.

Get in the groove and spin with it all over the capsule. Spread it. Spin until the nerves of your hands soak it up.

Something was telling him to head for the square. A waking.

Here we are then. We are the gods. Nestled in the drinking dens. Steam of sweat hanging like a dirty cloud. In the pouring rain, the good few swim to the bus lanes. Water droplets hanging on a pane of glass, tiny drowning men. Flickering up and swirling in car headlights. Revellers wandering home.

Summer solstice, deep shade, grind out the sequences. Winter shards. Crisscrossed in bloom, sunkissed tinctures. Rural stone cottages, enclosed by a valley. Somewhere out of sight. Deep south. Smoke rising from the chimney. The stone chimney, early evening. Ash rising into damp, muggy air, bubbles of air. Logs burnt, trees destroyed. Warmth of cottage peeping out, patchwork ferns, vegetation, undergrowth.

He cannot write out the words. Spoken sentences stick. Words rearranged, a new room, a different concept. The forest's eyes too deep, amid the ground slope, follow the stacks of stone. Across the bridge, ploughed into a brook.

Through the porous glass of other realities. Sat at the back of ancient streets. Firework salty.

During moist mornings, magpies mingle. Dust on the road, early sheen, the factory peers from the trees, splash of rain in trees, echo of mornings, rustling beyond, the abrasive bubble, mouth fog, these mornings, birds in trees, swallow deep, whistle, drenched friendships, findings hours, just short, young dreamers drift away, young dreamers drift

Summer rain exploding in small drops, rubber, burning rubber, the tip-top of trombone, the sun reaches its highest point, glinting off light blue wooden slats, reflecting off small, tiny rain puddles, prism of the eye, swirling in a small space, you are my tundra, the terrain where we sleep,

Rushing home from the pub, nicotine drenched and draped in glee, red crepe layers, dj enclosed under the stairs, silhouette of jazz, orange gas-light, firmament soft, warmth of bodies, the after-rush of energy, wooden carvings, candle plume,

Big stone slabs of the Mersey, the steel slabs of the Mersey, concrete layers, hard, abrasive slants, grown for years, immeasurable, sheer manpower of these girders, layers of raw power, reproduction, recreation, sheer raw power, subsistence, survival, the huge steel quilt of water, lasting steel, street-savvy steel, gritty geology, streetwise tufts, well-moulded plains, carved from glaciated spurs, the shape of the land, carved and crafted, slabs of the Mersey, chunky moraine,

Scent lingers, scent of sheen, lavender culture, shampoo and conditioner, sinewy grasps, or the damp of bathroom, mixture of those, bring the colours out the meridian, saunter on the plains, scattered on the terrain, lanes merging as it twirls, cathartic glances cast at the aisles, the melancholic glee of the silky portion, a kind of bold tenderness,

She is still waiting, she has been waiting, looking for the signal, wandering among the clock, near the square, each day gets colder, from the salty sea, as the waves break, supersheen,

"I think I've been here before... You, something about the face."

(2007)