Steven Waling


UNCULVERTED
(The Medlock at Mayfield Park)  


The river allowed to play out in the street without supervision
The river wakes up from its long industrial nightmares
The river indulgent is running with children on brand new equipment
The river no longer sells parcels & rumours of itself on corners

The river a sentence wanders its way round the subject 
The river still hears the steel toecaps of ghosts that hung round the depots for work
The river trafficked in whispers on the cleared ground of lost streets
The river sees the lorries arrive & depart one last time

The river all awe and bewilderment breathes the fresh air
The river a lost abandoned relative walks in through the door
The river its creatures exhaled from the lung of the earth
The river’s long undersong of birds roost in the new planting

The river all winding meander newly permitted to flow
The river’s gates by order open to the public between the hours of daylight 
The river’s deep breath in a built-up environment
The river a private/public initiative between the council & local businesses

The river a night-time liquidity of owls
The river all fox-scream and badger running through the ratting dark
The river drags up the stink of its marshes
The river’s first bridge where the legionaries crossed

The river’s unwritten histories of wildness constrained to the wheel
The river’s prehistory of bodies steeped in a bogland of battles
The river when it drained to the Zechstein Sea
The river all glacier and flesh of the mastodon

The river the sculptor of these long hills and valleys
The river still humming a blues of the drowned
The river swells with the red wine of dawn
The river remembers the deluge that formed it

The river foams with the clouds of apocalypse
The river is swimming away from our deserts
The river is teeming with shadows the eyes of lost children
The river will cover the earth in its spate

The river is asking if you want to play out
The river is small but it stiches the land to itself
The river is weaving the oceans together
The river remembers the flood it once was



WALK FOR HEALTH AND WELL-BEING


All scribble and flap     the mind still stuck
on that tenuous bridge     between
the old bungalows and morning

if I moisturise with Rock Face
will I climb out of funk     poppies
unbidden spring from pavement cracks

grey with a shower’s leftovers     No-one
thought to bring umbrellas     conversation
Mum once lived     somewhere like

That bridge in the late paintings
of Monet     japanese stalks trembling
on the verge     Talk turns to hankering

for overcooked vegetables     bacon stink
of bus drivers’ butties from the shop
our parents kept     That photo     I’m six

A litre of heaven from the 1 Stop Shop
where a man smokes outside     to hear
birds where the bandstand stood     Feel

nostalgic for greasy spoons     How do
clouds hold so much water     Daisy
Daisy     how can I sing the old songs

give me your answer    in a foreign land
walk over strange bridges here where
sparrows are loud as car horns     Walk

talk & repair as blossom breaks out
at last     Hope springs     unused to chatter
arrives late     still air     unbreathed


 
EXCHANGE SESTINA i.m. Edwin Morgan


STUNNING SAVAGE
PASSIONATE SWEEPING
DARK LIBERATING
GRIPPING URGENT
TENDER HILARIOUS
SHATTERING HEARTBREAKING

PASSIONATE SAVAGE
DARK SWEEPING
GRIPPING LIBERATING
TENDER URGENT
SHATTERING HILARIOUS
STUNNING HEARTBREAKING

DARK SAVAGE
GRIPPING SWEEPING
TENDER LIBERATING
SHATTERING URGENT
STUNNING HILARIOUS
PASSIONATE HEARTBREAKING

GRIPPING SAVAGE
TENDER SWEEPING
SHATTERING LIBERATING
STUNNING URGENT
PASSIONATE HILARIOUS
DARK HEARTBREAKING

TENDER SAVAGE
SHATTERING SWEEPING
STUNNING LIBERATING
PASSIONATE URGENT
DARK HILARIOUS
GRIPPING HEARTBREAKING

SHATTERING SAVAGE
STUNNING SWEEPING
PASSIONATE LIBERATING
DARK URGENT
GRIPPING HILARIOUS
TENDER HEARTBREAKING

SAVAGE SWEEPING
LIBERATING URGENT
HILARIOUS HEARTBREAKING



PLEASURELAND


Where the Ferris Wheel
                              turns Teacups
of Desire
               those autumn nights

when he flies
                              off the school wall
               into space

eating pennorths of black peas
               in a crater of the moon

where Dodgy Dan on dodgems
               eyes up the underage

                              Angels of Moonbase Alpha
               high-giggle halter tops
Charlie’d to the max

                              shoot down spinning boys
with heat-ray eyes

               He must be the Man from Mars
brain full of kryptonite

                              Holy Anachronism
on the council estate
                                             Batman

silly with hot dogs             fizzy pop
               and a ride on the Rockets

               Maybe Superman
duffel coat cape
                              caught in moonlight

begs the neon
                              for signs

from his Ice Fortress
               in magnetic North

and reads how  the girls
               with moussed-up hair
in his Mum’s Detective mags

run from the Monsters of Id

               as the stars
                              fall to earth

like dropped bags of popcorn



SANDALS WITH SOCKS


We catch that walking flavour
on the air of Blackburn Road

from Indian shops     women in sari
men in dhoti     what’s that green

thing in your basket     an avocado
not sure I like it

*
Later we fancy a woman who
loves someone else     stroll thru dark

Germanic streets     old-fashioned trams
trundle by memorials to missing residents

on door jambs of apartment blocks
“lest we forget”     all that

*
Sir may I speak to you
concerning God the mother     we speed

the fuck up     recall those days
the Mormons showed their films or

the Hari Krishnas gave out records &
we’re almost caught in those nets

*
We were full of a cold
when the brother of the girl

we used to fancy invited us
to an evening of free jazz

two drum solos took up residence
in the dancehall of our head

*
In a Jo’Burg market haggling gifts
real genuine African art     white men

wear sock with sandals everywhere
and Germans have no fashion sense

are examples of absolute truth

*
Old halls     out back of which
a tent and no-one for tennis

have long histories of abandonment
red bull cans and plastic backs     absented

signs     BUILDING UNSAFE DO NOT ENTER
a pall of cooking smoke

*
In the cheapest hostel in Barcelona
we eat falafel and fried eggs

in Amersterdam an Indonesian curry
or rice’n’three near the Angel

we should really take off our socks
learn to speak German

Steven Waling is a British poet, living in Manchester, England. His recent books include Spuds in History (SRP 2020) and Lockdown Lattitudes (Litter 2021).

 
 

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