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FEEL THE AIR
Dear Old England its rain its
proposed drunk tanks dangerous
say police chiefs streets of coats
on coastlines all buttoned up against
random stabbing woman arrested
dales and vales we'll feel the air
step down to streams mountains
so old they're almost rubbed out
in quiet lanes of murdered vicar
man arrested held in picturesque
coastal views of supercheap alcohol
watercolour castles rivers flow to
muddy estuaries not over beautiful
seaside towns drowning in gangs
cocklepickingdawndrizzle binge
drinking motorway services and
William Raoul Wordsworth Moat
fuel poverty daffodils snowdrop
coldest February since red top
page 3 landscape town and gown
records began remorseless rise
in mintcake unemployment figures
millstone grit back to backs and lots
of rain around jobs and the recovery
north/south divide press privacy
you couldn't make it up a field of
folk island of dubstep and grime
in coffee culture tea and weather
looking good for less in Primark
copycat row of high street stately
closures queer old dean and Half
Price Broadband metal thieving birds
FRONT ROOMS: AN ESSAY
This is where she keeps her objet d'art
glass cabinet at the back of her head
nowhere to
display them
I'm a front room, Christmas, 50s, 60s
maybe into the 70s and I ask
what was the front room for?
Standard
English clipped tones and a mother not
unlike my own through china eyes of an owl
bought as a Christmas present
cut glass sherry
glass silver bells
tinkle: who has front rooms nowadays
nowhere display
them
I live in a flat. Not completing
sentences: you live in a house
do you have a front room?
Or have you
knocked through the history of
the English language is the struggle
between freedom and prescription. Do
neighbours stare through windows
at the speechless furniture? We weren't
allowed in the front room sent
to the auction house and prepositions
not for ending a sentence with
nowhere to
display
What
happened to back parlours front rooms
the Middle English Vowel Shift
they're not for living in
Never ask the way
of someone who knows the glottal stop
has gradually entered Standard English
from the dialect one day we took the walls
down around the front room. Leave the
coats in the bedroom would anyone like
a drink you risk not getting lost
nowhere display
however much
you dusted the Spode the Queen's English
never drove down your street but she
visited the front room 1953
your first TV
split infinitives a ghostly flicker
in the corner of the room
MY FATHER'S SHIP
before we got up
our own work-faring captain
plate-bread wiped in the sink
off to the tramp steamer permanently
berthed in the centre of town
who came home each night to
his arse burnished throne
facing TV Soviet Weekly draped
over the arm left open at a page
tractors in Irkutsk ballet in Minsk
on the settee where we guzzled
cornflakes and Radio One time
told of being on a troopship
to Cairo called up three weeks
after the war survived
had a machine for roll-ups
one for darning socks
a Skoda in bits in the garage and
annoyed me frequently
the bulk of him nevertheless
a slightly austere figure harbour
dialectical materialism and a plan
for a moneyless state under the sheer
black hair of his head Morning Star
and the three day week bacon
eggs fried bread in the air
tobacco ghosts upstairs sometimes
I catch myself answering his absence
back about God politics the USSR heavy
as his last word closing the door
behind him as he goes
PERSISTENCE
OF MEMORY
Lights of the adult bookstores
illumine us as the night we go looking
for the phantom band of the Ramblas
Think sofa think
don't just sit on nostalgia
covered in nacho's and winestains
A range of ambiguous forms
in the antique shop of the heart
I have lines I don't know what to do with
do you cheat at pub quizzes
the important question of the day
We spill out on the street
(the shiny might be a modern sublime)
trailing in the wake of wrecked marriages
when I was young I was very shy
until I discovered religion or it
discovered me. Basically the Word
in the beginning of John's Gospel was
night prowls the
streets
of Prague in
broad daylight
I missed you so
much
spiritual
function of art
Saxophone colossus in a Bar¨a subway
something lyric this way comes
don't keep losing the remote
down the back of your head
retro the new now just look at the charts
switching channels in case you miss
something of Frank in your City Lights
pocket in Paris
I'm in Cafe Rouge Didsbury
avec un cafe au lait et jambon sandwich
ou croquette madame peut etre oui
all smothered in quandriness
sitting in my bedroom writing this
I've always felt the hand of the artist
is overrated. Another day of feeling
remains at first glance
Too much time
to be without love: the smell of good coffee
surrounds us
© Steven Waling
2012
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