Twisted Ornaments - Steve Coel

Twisted Ornaments

Here -

Where...seagulls congregate to share daytime information..

Where...mudless lanes fracture industry and metal..

Where...cold slab chipped rock fountains are smiling and love struck...

Where...glitter ball glamour is boarded and gig postered..

Where...glass shadows stretch into shoeless avenue..

is the place language comes to die.

*  *  *

Six Month Empty Paper Towns: small communities peopled only by those left behind...nowadays, as far as I can tell, an increasingly older and more reflective group of resilient residents who are daily learning to cope with emptiness and lean times...I can only ever be a visitor to these places, but I am always struck/horrified/bewildered by the underlying despair/bitterness of the conversations...

*  *  *

In my own local community - an hours walk shows all the shades and shapes...the movers...the shakers...the chancers...the winners...the losers of the area...Some are clearly falling between the cracks...the gaps that exist between each moment. Snatches of conversation. Moments of aggression. One day this. One day that.

*  *  *

I am drawn to the loneliness of busy places ...the emptiness of crowded places...what is happening is not on the margins of the community...something has gone is missing...opportunity probably.

O ble mae'r bobl wedi Mynd? / Where have all the people Gone?

Steve Coel

Meic Agored: February, 2025

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

in you comes

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

 

in you comes

barely missed and completely blitzed, just another forgotten madman hero

in you comes

a hero bent by routine

a hero twisted by addiction

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

in you comes

smelling of time.

Steve Coel

Half Stolen Buildings

In her regulation daytime armour 

that still cracks 

with broken promises and yesterdays 

coarse park bench whisper, 

the young girl pushes her 

vape shadowed baby carrier 

past boarded window and 

gummed railing.

Her world is the High Street 

where each day a bitter grey tide 

shambles downhill 

towards abandoned blue churches 

and disappearing city light.

And it is here her plastic shoes

will slap into one off needles, 

and it is where, even on dry days

the pavement is wet.

Steve Coel

* * *

I often write quickly so as not to lose the spark of an idea...

Aside: Painting in the studio I am also initially quite spontaneous, because I am in most cases, confident both with what I'm doing and with the materials available I am using. I also like taking photographs of the images I make at all stages, because sometimes impressive/important early stage work can get hidden behind overpainting, scraping back and so on..

Steve Coel

Meic Agored: February, 2025

Steve Coel

False Doors

Here -

Where...shop doors embrace the bubble gum smell of illegal cheap drink..

Where...curled up steel yard hideaways become legend..

Where...broken promises are public..

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

Where...aimless driving is deliberate..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Band Stand

Here -

Where...top floor swearing is frequent..

Where...poor disguises are deliberate..

Where...slippery couples meet between sheets of harsh fabric..

Where...derelict woods shelter shriveled worlds..

Where...doorstep begging is hasty and mindless..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Lon Ganol

Here -

Where...cheap tables split abandoned doorways..

Where...cliff edge bramble holds litter to ransom..

Where...puzzled footstep is matched with clumsy frail voice..

Where...second hand clipped fashion rails spill strong alcohol and stained toxic mist..

Where...beauty is hooded..

is the place language comes to die.

* * *

Note[s]:

* Previously i've been asked about humour in my narratives. Difficult question to answer really as it's sometimes just out of reach and occasionally even i don't recognise it when it occurs. Go figure.

* I have listened to other creators when they reflect that they are drawn to things, events, places that a lot of people often don't see. I like walking and looking but I also I like listening to places. So I guess both listening to and seeing places might begin to explain the driver for the MicroFlashFiction /experimental narratives here.

Steve Coel

Severed Road - The Right Shadows (2025)

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

This severed road blankets the hill. Grey and undemanding it reluctantly 

i

 n

  c

   l

    i

     n

      e

       s 

towards the sea 

creating as it falls

regimented lines of steel 

brown with industrial rust 

that envelops a cowering park.

The park - where...

lovers argue and kiss...

young men drink...

and children play. 

From the sea below 

comes the smell and spell 

of promise, 

as dredgered stones 

rattle loudly on concrete and flesh.

Steve Coel

***

In the studio I am surrounded by the archives and leftovers of previous projects and exhibitions. They are a constant reminder of how ideas either developed or fell apart. Success' and failures I suppose. Having finished The Mercy Path (2024) and Half Stolen Buildings (2024) I have now started placing all my work: MicroFlashFiction, Documentary Fiction Photography and Painting, under an umbrella working title - The Right Shadows (2025).

Again, I'm guessing, work will accumulate in the studio, get mixed up with previous bits and pieces and go off at tangents that I'm currently oblivious to. It's how I like to create...

Steve Coel

Dead Air into Warm Harp

Documentary Fiction Photography

Since I bust my legs down The Works I've had to spend all my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be known. Lost everything now. Still; once I get enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie down The Vulcan, and, often or not, I end up talking to the old girls warming themselves up before they go and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury.

Clink Hotel across the road gets noisy in the afternoon so I usually wonder back into town for a bit of a stretch and go and cadge a cup of tea from Asteys before heading back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk.

Doesn't have time to feel sad really. Not me. Trick I finds, is to forget past and just stick to what I knows. Need change of shoes mind. Guess I'll find some in the box by side door Sunday morning.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

Warm Air into Dead Harp reminds me of so much that is never fixed properly...I noticed a lot of damaged adults growing up...some from the war and too many others from closures of steel works and the docks...I still see damaged adults today, we all do...all ages, from all over...it's never right...never was...Steve Coel

Promise is a Promise

Documentary Fiction Photography

Today - doorway, long corridor.

Place used to be arcade, not now. Shops are long gone, the roofs caved in and now mesh windows are being ripped out by scrappies and decorated courtesy of local youth. No charge. Nice touch that.

So you could say it's quiet round this way now there's nothing left to nick.

Council keeps saying places like this are going to be developed. We'll see.

Meantime it's where I come to spend my days. To finish jobs I been doing during the night. I'll have finished in six months anyway. Do what the fuck they want then. All of them.

And, if they ever finds out what I've been hiding round here won't be any come back.

Promise is a promise.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

In 2015 I completed a series of MicroFlashFictions which I called 'The Tin Collector'.

Spontaneous, improvised short story ideas mainly...responses to the dull echo of a so called change in the local area...older people talked about the past and little else, younger people about an unknown, uncertain future...Promise is a Promise was an observation of a guy who would just sit all day among the bricks and demolished area behind the High Street...talking to himself...

Steve Coel

Don't Swim in Canals

Documentary Fiction Photography

Some people just don't like reading instructions. Or being given them it would seem.

Even now Thinking back to that night it's still possibly the saddest excuse I've heard, and, after so many visits, over so many years, I'd thought I'd seen it all.

I hadn't.

So she fancied a quiet drink. Right now. Of course this meant she'd have to visit the nearest, and possibly least welcoming pub to her home. She could have had a quiet drink at home. But, this inevitably led to many distractions, the least being her mobile, the most being...well it was mainly her mobile actually.

Her face however, was a familiar one in the pub and which meant people knew when she was to be left well alone. She simply had a way about her she did. But the lads in the corner didn't know this did they? No they didn't.

You'd have thought the message posted behind the bar was warning enough. Oh But no.

Even a quiet word, followed by a series of worried glances from the bar man were ignored. 

The lads evening ended abruptly with a last cold drink and a chaser of warm blood.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

Way back when...I wrote a whole heap of experimental London short fictions...exercises mainly, printed up and placed in the alternative sections of various outlets in the South East...I was beginning to learn what I liked to write about and perhaps as importantly, what I could do and what I couldn't...Apples and Pears was probably, no pun intended...the pick of the bunch...

Steve Coel, 2025

Empty Corners

Documentary Fiction Photography

Stepping away from the street through a broken two door, customers painfully walk into a high congregation of brown paper and leather. Inside; along each damp tired wall, anointed paint quietly peels and unclean fragile carpet, frayed by disappointment, falls into hooded empty corners stacked high with rotting chairs.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel