leather jackets and holy shoes
PAGE 1
Cracking bodies lying on wet grass and cider bottles in hand and
pocket.
Dotted around the church benches and full bins, brown anoraks, knee
length leather jackets and holy shoes.
Busses queue as gasping pedestrians run with full shopping bags and
buskers blow and sing. Builders shout, machines grind and grunt as
dust falls on sheets and skips fill with metal.
Rucksacks on backs - young girls wander into shops as stylish
haircuts argue with boyfriends in doorways.
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
Sleeping in the city library young men hide from the rain. Coffee
and sandwiches, buskers juggling with fire.
In cellars and high places newspapers and books new suits, broken
heels, bus passes.
Movement around the inner city, dictated by jostling crowds and
pushchairs. Nobody shouts, yet the noise is relentless -
consistent, persistent and painful. No cars. Where are the sharp
sounds? The clutter and cluster of metal and music.
All style and posing - small groups and men rifling through bins
throwing new found bread to the pigeons.
People like ants in corridors and alleys, frightened animals,
glimpsed in corners.
Light fades and night settles quickly.
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
Closing down sales.
Empty offices crying out to be filled and young workers walking the
streets at mid-day trying to think of something to do.
The scene repeated - day in, day out. Year in, year out.
Relentless like a cold stream down a mountainside.
But a stream always ends in a dirty pool. The pool never deepens it
just thickens like pea soup. Salt is added, then too much pepper
and the taste is bitter, sour and scours the roof of the mouth. It
discolours teeth, staining them and finally gums bleed. Blood pours
out of the mouth and spills onto shirt fronts and carpet.
And still the pool thickens - until it dries and becomes a solid,
immovable mass.
Without veins.
Without organs.
Without feeling.
Without movement.
steve coel
brasluniau
Hay on Wye
steve coel
An 11.59 Publication
