L’ ESPRIT DE L’ ESCALIER
Sometimes
when I’m descending the staircase,
mouth
wrapped round a yawn, fingertips
rubbing
sleep from my eyes, the Spirit
will
make with some unwanted homily
along
the lines of, “Early shift again, eh?
Rather
you than me. Pissing it down out there.”
Sometimes,
ascending the staircase, eyelids
like
steel shutters, feet dragging, the Spirit
will
ambush me with a question or observation
so
perfectly admixing absurdity
and
existential terror that my night’s sleep
is
guaranteed a non-event, the ceiling
marked
out as that place where the poet
spoke
of something and something clashing
by
night. The Spirit sticks to the staircase
but
manages with a jeu d’ esprit
or
some other je ne sais quoi to infect
just
about every square inch of the house.
DRIVE
IT LIKE IT’S STOLEN
Drive
it like you unlocked it
by
shimmying a thin strip of metal
between
window and door panel.
Drive
it
like
cars don’t have alarms nowadays.
Drive
it like you punched loose
the
casing under the dash,
sparked
two wires together.
Drive
it
like
Hollywood wrote the Highway Code.
Drive
it like your rearview is full
of
flashing red and blue,
highway
patrol bearing down.
Drive
it
like
there’s still a disused access road
and
a washed out bridge
between
you and the border.
THREE
VULTURES LOOK AT A POET
(after
‘Thirteen Blackbirds Look at a Man’ by R.S. Thomas)
1.
The
quill
dropped
from his hand
just
seconds ago, the vultures
already
cleared for descent,
appetites
piqued
by
the lifeless form
of
the poet.
2.
And
yet
they
continue to circle,
hesitant,
as if awaiting
some
crucial piece of information,
such
as the amount of calories
per
poet, its allergens,
how
fatty it is.
3.
Later,
three
vultures suffer
an
excess of poet,
wish
they’d waited for the carcass
of
a week-dead marsupial,
something
less steeped
in
alcohol and bile.
LUNCH
BREAK, LATE SHIFT
That
last round trip, bus packed
with
office drones heading home,
and
you still an hour off your break.
The
early doors crowd are getting their first in
while
you’re handing over
to
your relief driver. The coffee shop
you
sometimes while away a break in
has
drawn down the shutters.
A
wander round the city centre
is
a tour of closed doors, dimmed
lights,
nowhere to go but the gulag
of
a manky canteen down an alleyway
where
crime scene tape wouldn’t be out of place.
RECIDIVIST
It’s
beyond my control: I’ll do it again,
a
one man-version of a rogue nation.
Not
a question of if but a matter of when.
It’s
both nature and nurture, and even then
there’s
more than a hint of predestination.
It’s
beyond my control: I’ll do it again.
There’s
no childhood trauma, no open
wound,
no psychological revelation;
there’s
no question of if but a matter of when.
There’s
just a darkness buried deep in some men
and
you’d know if someone reversed our stations
that
It’s beyond control: you’d do it again
and
probably embrace it like an old friend,
your
guts churning with excited impatience,
not
a question of if but a matter of when.
Sorry
not sorry. Je ne regrette rien.
I’m
not one for remorseful contemplation.
It’s
beyond my control: I’ll do it again;
not
a question of if but a matter of when.
Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works.
He has published two pamphlets with The Black Light Engine Room Press, Numbers
Stations and The
Little Book of Forced Calm; and three
full collections with Shoestring Press, No
Avoiding It, Can’t
Take Me Anywhere and Service
Cancelled. His fourth collection, Mad
Parade, a selection of political satires,
is published by Smokestack Books.
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