J Slinger

hooligan seagulls and brassy brazilian from a back door open wide there’s a dappled orange light on the grass like the surface of a pool  and leaves flutter on bushes of carnival skirts a dandelion clock head floats across the blue that tendrils of bushes stretch their limbs to everything’s still  with each little piece moving  and the cat rolls through chalk

sitting around the fountain outside st. barts wheelchairs and scrubs patients and family pigeons gathering like rolex street sellers the fountain spills  and fills itself up to spill again a lady in a gown is wheeled to the fountain by her adult daughters  she reaches out a heavy hand and they playfully scoop the cold water into her palm  there’s joy on their faces    a child showing love through service and a dying person savouring the touch of cold water  just got to get through the day, a doctor tells his colleague as they walk past, then it’s the weekend    

i don’t remember mum and dad on those dusty yellow summers, but I do remember the soft brass of a well fed pigeon  it’s a recollection of stillness that i feel when I hear the sound even now and conversations drift by the window and machinery churns underneath while the pigeon overhead purrs across slate rooftops  and the time that’s passed in between these two moments is felt only in this coarse skeleton that rises slower

the neighbour with the window display of st georges flags and a ‘vote restore’ sign  has put a swing in his front garden  for the neighbouring refugee kids

a bud waiting to live or a leaf waiting to die i am the surviver of genes the latest in the line of eyes that have seen this world born again a body already weary from yesterday what are we breeding contenders for? the good fortune of at least the same?

dad sat among us  a jelly fish dry on the sand swimming in thoughts his residued face stoney  i imagine it like being under water faces above the surface through squints a soft weaving glimmer of colours voices in excited flocks tommy wants to say his name to see how he’ll respond but there aren’t many connections only a click trying to flame  we are the next generation’s manure the crunch of a leaf under bare feet  here is youth, and here is death meeting as promised   

our time is a curved horizon that curves until it doesn’t i swam in my time resisting the urge to paddle  a hundred thoughts churned and each limb itched to move i sank in my time and a memory came of a loud clock in a silent room - the smell of the dust of old things  and then the relief of a TV too loud and time being just what’s left of the current temporary thing i have feared the time of old age  understimulating and over stimulated an ocean of time but a mind on repeat and oblivious to it  a loud clock to remind you it’s there, but it’s regular tick also signaling it leave  i want to lie in the salt water that holds me still with a mind only for the sky a cold chest and warm face and the music of time that swells long before and after my body is within it   

there is a small stone bridge between two towns that has a two man toll booth 5p to pass two old  guys sit side by side - one with a liverpool fc cap, love on the knuckles and status quo in the soul - his colleague is made of gravel and fingers fixed in a heavy crane claw we wonder how much they make - fists of 5 pence pieces - £100 a day? £500 a week? we joke that they blow the £500 each weekend on booze, drugs and women and then monday morning arrives they meet at the toll box each at their own door the river black with a milky mist head and it starts again with a single 5 pence piece dropped in to a strip club paper cup

there’s a taste in my mouth  that trickled in through my ear along a watered route of chisel marks gathering grit, mud and moss I can’t even remember the words  but I want it to explain this taste so perhaps it’s just the silt of the moments that spilled before there’s no grudge but I’m scratching the sore to find the justification for once feeling another way  to be offered a lifetime of apology from the wrong person

dad’s at home with the blinds shut bbc news living room lamp stained tshirt and pyjama bottoms hanging the toilet seat is dirty and the oven’s seen a fire he tells me about a long lost friend  she’s been living in america where she made millions now she’s back to england to look after him i’ll show you her text he says  i’m worried that there isn’t going to be a message - worried that he’ll be confused - but he finds it  here you are the message is from my ex-wife just saying hello she found me, he smiles, after all this time he’s on a loop  speaking with clarity about family, past jobs and partners, but then a fog drops - like forgetting why you came in a room - and he goes back to the same delusion  the slow dissolution of boundaries of his memory- time and faces bleed - mould  is growing in the corners  he tried to save a baby from a fire, but she died he had to clear up the pieces of a suicide inconveniencing commutes an ira bomb...