Jo Willoughby
Seven Seventeen
Evening time, bag of mud
And crumbling stone, shedding skin.
It’s been falling down ever since it was built, she said.
The building down the road, not 30 years old
Already destined for dust.
He said he worked there when he was younger
Sold electronics
In broad daylight, a person had walked in off the street
Pinched a TV
Displayed behind the counter
Pins, brooches
Rusted blades
Funding cuts
A leather soul
He walked from Spain to Winchester
A pilgrimage, or so he claimed.
They estimate that you can walk
2000 miles in a modern walking boot.
To Amazon
And Paypal
That spam email from HMRC
A purchased bike that was never received
A fragment, a chamber pot
The newspapers are interested in toilets.
In passing
He told me all about himself
and his worms
In the park nearby
You find them stranded on pavements
Breathing through skin
Lung tonic
Damp patches, blotched parquet.
Pitter
Patter
Pile of dust needs clearing
The disabled toilet is cleaner
He says
The alarm
Toilet door shut
The cat has started pissing on the bathroom mat.
The new tenants
Have ruined that bamboo flooring.
All vacant landscapes
Have toilet roll under a bush
And you begin to notice
Each shade of white
Pearl, Iridescence
Yellow fuel light is on.
But you can drive for 40 miles on empty.
36 miles per hour
Speed camera on that same route
Driven over and over
Flash wakes you
And you pulled up too fast next to him
Got him with your broken wing mirror
Reminded you of that man
Crying
Says he exists on two levels
And on one he makes bad decisions
Details:
10 letters
D
Something
Something
Something
Something
Something
Something
Something
Something
something
Detachment
Fractured screen
Thin slivers, saxon glass
Saturday night
Nobody wants you
When you’re out of context
Black smudge, green smudge, yellow smudge
A cesspit seems to turn the earth green
Brick earth
Earth to make bricks
We’re looking for dark circles
Pits
An air raid shelter and a lift shaft
Student accommodation and ALDI
A Fox
A Glove
This nanny state
The bottom failing on a Bakelite ink well
A Dinosaur, the machine chomps
chomps the skin from the building
“We destroy the past in pursuit of knowledge”
Layers dug away, the guts
Fill in holes with the same crushed concrete
And that Victorian rubbish
A toothbrush, nailbrush
But I keep the dirt under my nails
All week
Can you hear the sea
(a snack,
held to an ear)
it once ran under your feet.
Under these stones.
My people have no sea
But a river runs from north to south
And I was a journalist
(and draws a picture of a bird)
I drew a crude map
England
Scotland
Wales
Ireland
Should be a little bigger
U-K
Bare teeth
Do they resemble mountain peaks?
And this gnarled metal
Like a sculpture by that man
Like a sculpture by that man
But it’s the scraps
From a building
Built
By another man
A psychological role
a lump of stone.
The tide
The movement of grit
(never quite remembered facts)
Has made them holy
She said
And think how solid a stone is
Rubbed smooth at corners
How many centuries
It takes to make a hole
