Faulty Escape Plan No.1, 652

There you stand in

your grey shirt

and your Sports Direct shoes

tired little writer

with nothing to lose

but the love that

you’ve found and

the books you have left

and the intimate

knowledge of a wallet

bereft

and you squint

and your scrutinise

this thing you’ve become

wearing those shoes

as though you’re

wanting to run

and run more and

keep running

and not once ever stop

lying to yourself

that you won’t ever

be caught

whilst you’re waving

your grey shirt

in bungled surrender

and Jackson Browne-alike

singing

pray for the pretender

as you know all

the while that even here

on the edge

it’s a long way down

from your oubliette ledge

it’s a long long way

from your dreams

to the floor

so don’t quit this

not yet

but still don’t shut the door. 

Bygone

Never thought I’d

see a Spitfire

a Reg Mitchell original

in the skies over

Brighouse

far from the coast

and from the hidey

hole of government

even further from its

heyday

its dogfights

or

its dragonfights

as always seemed

to me more fitting

for its name

but there one is

repaired

renewed and

fairly resurrected

performing a solitary

pantomime

an

airborne operetta

of valour

its engine

singing the praises

of the few

whilst the many

crowd along this

road and the uppermost

length of this field

cameras and binoculars

and mobile phones in

hand

half an eye on the

gathering tangle of

traffic behind

them

none of them wanting

to miss it

but equally

not wanting to

be stuck here

being bygone

for too long after

it leaves

but I

being bygone on

foot

skip and dodge

and duck and weave

my way through

all of that

keeping both eyes

on the Spitfire

the Reg Mitchell

original

as it makes its

final pass

and sweeps clear

away into the

east

shrinking down by degrees into 

various scale model

sizes – and at

last into a

dot

on the vast

radar screen of the

sky – which is no longer

over Brighouse

and as I walk

I think that

I don’t think I’ll

ever see a Spitfire make

that trip again.  

Stop and Motion

Some nights you can batter and twat and tinkle the keys and it’s just squat, nothing, nowt doing. It’s just stall after stall after stall after stall. Sputter and crunch of tyres out along the hard shoulder. Climb out. Slam door. Kick gravel away. See the smoke of it lift off and scatter like ashes. Think of this plan of yours as dead, gone, cremated. This hope you once had of being one of the greats, the all-timers, the old-timers, eventually, when your books have all made it past the century mark. A scrap of immortality. A sliver of worth. Hot student bodies in tight sweaters with their breasts leaning over the desk as they search the mass of your text for its myriad meanings. The smiles on their faces when they find the few lines that really, truly, undoubtedly work. The few lines you left behind from nights when there was something doing, when you were just in the groove and shut-out from doubt, and only world left was the world you were writing. Page after page of it. Written, read, edited. Calm in your head as you lay down to sleep. Not stuck by the roadside, pissing into the hedgerow, watering the wildlife, and staring hungrily, angrily up at the stars. Not telling yourself over and over it’s high time you quit. When you simply climbed back inside and let the road take you. When it’s just word after word after word after word, and all of them feel necessary, and useful, and all of them feel good as they make their way out.