CONCRETE_OLYMPUS_

the drinker on his own  not lonely with a glass a thin blue plastic udder of cans  and all the answers on sour breath a bottle of milk in one hand a green glass bottle in the other silver hair neat on the bench  and a full suitcase loyal by his side

it’s the first deep  glug glug glug  tshhh water on the fire it plans its day a supermarket visit at a respectable time because  you’re not one of them it knows to be shadowed in a cold parked car or taking out the bins tin skeletons in the corners of rooms ears on the stairs clanking bin bodies it’s the lingering stench in a kids memory a treacherous lip the sadness of needing more of  an  unimaginative it I’m stooping in the aisle again

  Little Flynn fall-walking  in the pink dust of a Paris park shouting to nesting birds  wonky fringe cut in the bath Memory birds in the clear sky flying through a thin soup of everything doctor I need you to take this blancmange in my skull  and pull out these single moments and cut out the tarry worry I woke up with and reswallowed give me those moments that I lose without scent and sound and the new pages of the rush  of a child from their childhood Let me live in a carousel of moments fresh baby heads toilet chat cuddles over the sea Keep those birds with me let them land in my hand  or hop on branches alongside me

H ome from school, change clothes, eat dinner and jump in dad's car to Langley Trading Estate in the van.   We had Henry hoovers, bin bags and bleach. I’d clean the first floor: tipping desk ashtrays into little white bin bags of ash, emptying the cans of Coke from their little bins. One of the desks had a Page 3 calendar on the wall.  Cleaning office toilets at night. The halogen buzz, dim light and a wall length mirror spooked me out, so I’d bleach the toilets, flush, and clean the mirrors without looking behind me.  When we were done I bought a hot chocolate from the machine and sit in that warm feeling of having worked.  I only did it to help my dad. He’d left a good job as a fire chief in Knightsbridge to start a cleaning business with a mate. He had vans, hoovers and headed paper, but was soon a one man operation cleaning offices day and night. The business went bankrupt and we lost our house. The debts followed him until he sold the world that he’d gone in...

There’s someone living in it - at the top - the room with the plastic red roses in the window, underneath the yawning hole in the roof where the slum pigeons nest - the lonely company of TV strobe in the dark. The hotel closed in 2011, although time had stopped in the hotel in the late 1980s. Breakfast was served in a David Lynch red room, a full English ordered the day before and served in reverse. This was a hotel of the old internet. Scrolling scrolls of information. Disappearing into the lost property bucket of capital S Search.  For us, it was the mystery across the road -  Cars under covers that evaporated in the morning - Floor plans showing networks of corridors left behind.  A building once occupied by an elite, fallen into three star hotel mediocracy and left for dead in the playground of casual property acquisition - bored by the resistance of municipal planning permission.  We want to get inside - to take photos of the fall from grace. But this is someo...