1/23/2016 0 Comments 4 poems by Stephen WattSeeker Life; part two. A curtainless window seeps lamppost honey, weak amber electricity illuminated on a silent movie mirror. He buttons the Salvation Army shirt. He knots the university tie. He folds the Red Cross map which is circled with a destination bullseye and a scrawled bus timetable along the top, foreign in any language. Dystopian tenements loiter at each street corner where children’s chalked pavements transform into outlines of murder victims. Christmas puppy dog ribbons become discarded rainbows in wheelie bins and the prickly profile of the prison sighs with kits of pigeons orbiting the stark soup kitchens relied on by many around these parts. He walks the road unknown. He is guided by the rising clement sun. He memorises each tapering spire, each vowel of the newsstand man’s tongue so that he may return to where he has come from. Printed numbers engraved on glazed office doors countdown like rocket launches; spacemen’s prayers decoded into numeric form. He gathers his tall shadow from the stone and opening the door, steps into his first job interview where the bombs don’t fall and hope can rise. Helicopters Sent home from school, egg-yolk in hair and bruises on cheek, I arrive to a yelping sister, wounded creature, mother and father clustered into a curved archway; locked arms form a gate. Aphonic, I am orthostatic, a slab of teenage ignorance programmed into automatic indifference, inarticulate and inwardness. My sibling, two years my senior, eighteen, bemoans that her beloved’s body has been recovered by helicopters from the River Leven. News on the radio crackles, babbles a name, location; choked on a Medium Wave station. The teapot’s perfume strangles the air. Dad is lost in a tabloid puzzle; a crossword clue. A neighbour timidly chaps the door to ask my mum if what she’s heard is true. The truth hurts. Sister’s diary betrays itself spilling hand-written letters and photo booth pictures like glitter over her bedroom carpet. A boy band heartlessly grins from the ceiling. Shitehole Spots of rich, crimson dog period blood speckle the slaughtered flower heads executed by swaggering drunken-dullards staggering towards their slimy, fetid beds. Spiders spin gob-webs on iron gates, dream catchers for lout’s lubricated mucus and invalid ice cream vans blaze like bonfires courtesy of glass bottles pickled with rags, doused with lighter fluids Milky girls emerge from darkened lanes like shell-shocked pearls inside open mouths and stricken dead poets stitched onto tea towels verify their trauma with perturbed pouts. A sponged protective lies on the ground like a funfair prize minus the goldfish. Another boy racer dies at the perilous roundabout before he’s even reached his twentieth. Groundhog day gossip lip-reads in cafes like rumour’s vocation on becoming cynical and while local people bemoan their births an accident, my mum taught me that I was a miracle. Buddy Holly’s Holiday skin begins with transatlantic hymns for a drinks trolley to appear. It is playful, hopeful, social and global until the first doubtful quibbles emanating from the shuttle bus driver who mumbles something that resembles your final destination. It is unintelligible, unclear. At resorts, holiday skin inhales a toxic blend of bratwurst hot dogs and splurges of sun cream. There are tanks where miniscule fish gnaw dead skin from pensioners’ feet and toddlers who float in the pool upon racing derby wreaths and walls that are guarded by exploding firework-shaped palm trees and flies that use cocktail straws like water flumes and cockroach siestas in paving cracks of sweltering afternoons and white socks with sandals and bellies like hot air balloons that decry wish you were here upon the backs of postcards. Holiday skin swims in glitzy oceans where decapitating Frisbees are in whirling motion and the sun sets into the side of cappuccino machines. Sand sculptures of Zeus or the mermaids reminds holiday skin of phones in dark hallways somewhere more northern, never ringing to say you’ve arrived safely. Away from obscure club strips and wind-filled plastic footballs, body-conscious belles drop their beach towels by the rocks to embrace dusk’s cooling spray, frolicking like ants inside the bedside glass of water you guzzled when the air conditioning refused to play. Holiday skin is anything with gin, giving in to frizzy hair and double chins for every single photograph. It is the ruby twinkle of Mars in morse code exploding in every ripple of laughter; every nipple uploaded to Instagram exposed beneath sticky plaster. Holiday skin burns, bubbles, makes homeward-bound clothes feel uncomfortable against each roll of newly-singed fat. Sharing an earphone each, we watch the plane’s ‘No Smoking’ signs light up like a neon beach – the shape of home sucking us in towards layers of hoodies, jeans, washings, Coronation Street. About the author: Stephen Watt is a poet and performer from Glasgow whose debut collection "Spit" was published in 2012 after winning the Poetry Rivals slam in Peterborough. Since then, Stephen has had work published in various countries, won the StAnza Digital Poetry Slam, the Hughie Healy memorial trophy, and the Tartan Treasures award. A new pamphlet collection "Optograms" is being published by Wild Word Press in February 2016. https://www.facebook.com/StephenWattSpit/
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