Stretched Bone #3

Where...small feet climb cob-web steel tree and pram wheels fall into strutted path..

Where...slippery eyes fix on glassy oil pavement..

Where...shredded cliff top grass twists halted message...

Where...bitter, blameless minds enter watered down invisible strips of shadow..

Where...dead fruit is picked clean by unseen nightlife..

Where...barber shop windows reflect passing stooped daytime..

Where...cheap toys are solitary on garden wall and stolen trolley..

Where...lost faces merge with elderly condemned brick..

Where...suspicious tin badge statements are worn like dismissed broken attitude..

Where...wild animals pass through broken door work place.

Steve Coel

Stretched Bone #2

Where...weather growls at footsteps and distant noise is ancient and honest..

Where...rain drills fluent bitter nightmare into supple iron smile..

Where...broken machinery sits proudly inside dusty windowed derelict shelter..

Where...silent voices speak empty values to woollen walls.. 

Where...cold chipped slab rock fountain is smiling and love struck..

Where...happiness is hidden in fly tipped back lane..

Where...crafted leather shoes sink into warm mud..

Where...gum fleeced stolen memory crumbles onto hidden platform..

Where...thick skinned beauty skids abruptly into gridded fence..

Where...teenage defence is tightly held to deaf ear.

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Stretched Bone #1

Where...voices falter and fingers strip lace and metal..

Where...oily shapes are squandered along collapsed kerbside shopfront..

Where...dreams begin and life ends..

Where...old smiles are reflected in rust..

Where...ugly water washes up dead fish..

Where...fly-tipped memory eats up roofless factory space..

Where...damp cloth pulled tight obscures fading gossip..

Where...cluttered twisted ornaments stride down sparrow allotment fenced path..

Where...for the cloth eared, movement is ghostly...

Where...warehouse beams trap steel smile and welded arm.

Steve Coel

Wild Places

 

Steve Coel

Rains on Me

Innocence doesn't exist here. Not even for the young. No; here there is only idle backyard gossip about short goodbyes to forgotten lovers, and, etched into shop fronts and dockside jetty, the dead eyes of drunken uncles staring from fireplace photographs.

Steve Coel

Up at the knock

You's always in the hidden places. 

Seen walking along the cold suede banks into the windowless tin roof shacks guarded by blinded geese and haunted by the black hair of the missing. 

And you's seen down the tight velvet lanes too, where the wild horses run and beer is drunk and apples still grow in secret orchards.

Steve Coel

Smells of Time

In you comes -

in your sad seven year old ironic tracksuit and pair of box fresh.

In you comes -

looking for deals on the board behind the counter which we know show same best day as last time, last week, last month.

In you comes -

doing quick sums and ordering a dozen shots with your release money which you quickly shares out to punters who isn't interested.

In you comes -

barely missed and completely blitzed, just another forgotten madman.

In you comes -

a madman bent by routine

a madman twisted by addiction

a madman caught in the to and fro of the outside which has turned its back and good riddance.

In you comes -

smelling of time.

Steve Coel

Small Pockets

Here -

Where...lack of light is accepted..

Where...distracted actions are captured in shuttered doorways of forgotten industrial estates..

Where...open spaces become dog bound and burnt by fogged spite..

Where...electric holes are constructed to control and monitor neighbourhoods..

Where...each step is guided by habit..

Where...bottom shelf goods are swallowed by small pockets..

Where...groups of people congregate and fail to notice each other..

Where...poor disguises are deliberate..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

Steve Coel