From The Mercy Path (2024)

Lowland Feather

...after years spent on The Mercy Path absorbing wire sharp whistled song, farewells are still given through brick house window and muddied wall...

...close by, as carefully baited lowland feather slaps its muted surface, ripple stone water stumbles into ice age grass bank...and through gaps in tree tired stone walls, wild horses fret and gather as rutted horizons shadow mountain valley...

...(there) out on the scarab pathed moor, where lonely birds pleat their song into ferned memory, old feet, leisured by a lifetime of pain, shuffle slowly homewards...

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings ( 2024)

Drunken Memory

Here - 

Where...small feet carry heavy living..

Where...polluted idle engine blows rust water into lipped gutter..

Where...emergency words remain anonymous..

Where...stone roof collapse haunts drunken memory..

Where..rock pocket begging is sandwiched between road crossing and loose fingers..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

 

Kiosk Cards

Here -

Where...sad walled crowds archive day time sky..

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

Where...anonymous kiosk cards are pierced carefully on stolen rusty spike..

Where...blistered nickel punches into broken fence..

Where...shallow drunk opinion dominates afternoon decision making..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

Coat Collar Romance 

Here -

Where...shaded front window blanks out screamed memory..

Where...watered gravel road hides handshake meeting..

Where...cheap endeavour is forced..

Where...emotion is mid-air and blank eyed..

Where...coat collar romance is early evening and drunk..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

Charity Coffee

Here -

Where...bladed vape chatter tumbles into unlit corridor..

Where...fragmented sour heeled machinery lies idle..

Where...cracked glass memory leans into elbowed temper..

Where...crippled time shelters from hillside churched solitude..

Where...rusty thimble alcoholics drink cold cartons of charity coffee..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel