Steve Coel - Small Pockets

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Small Pockets

Here - 

Where...stubs of paper shape tomorrows nightmare..

Where...fussy overcoats and woolen carpet litter grassed up valley roadway..

Where...modern memory is glazed with empty cans of strong lager..

Where...fallen brick slices postered railing..

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

is the place language comes to die.

Note: Speeding cars, shoplifting fights, Sunday league arguments...can all turn a simple stroll into an inner city symphony of sorts...a human soundscape that is probably being repeated almost everywhere...Steve Coel

Steve Coel - Sharp Light

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Sharp Light

Here -

Where...recycled gloves spill glassed ale in corner seat of damp pop-up..

Where...grey cigarette stained trackies stand broken in cement bank shelter..

Where...midnight football is supported by passing runaways headed to early morning meal..

Where...cupped smoke and industrial strength poison cans work full-time to keep the old out..

Where...sharp light slices into puddled indoor short-cut..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Nylon Building - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Nylon Building

Here -

Where...knotted metal carpet rolls lean on concrete window saleroom..

Where...reflected sleep is caught shuffling across bridged river..

Where...drained smiles remain confused..

Where...doctored papers shield gridded nylon building..

Where...ordered talk is wooden..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Screamed Memory - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography

Screamed Memory

Here -

Where...shaded front windows blank 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.

This particular 'word riff'...which became Half Stolen Buildings (2024), An 11.59 Publication...still fascinates me...Somebody told me they saw it as 'short story in experimental poetry form'...Fair enough...but I am not a Poet...for me this is not poetry...it is MicroFlashFiction...Steve Coel

Hollow Buildings - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography

Hollow Buildings

Here -

Where...hollow buildings shadow painted moment..

Where...dull flowers pilfer hedgerow litter..

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

Where...daily trauma functions alongside passing rumour..

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

is the place language comes to die.

Frosted Vision - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography

Here - 

Where...narrow lane adventures are captured in muddy headlight and cry of tortured bird..

Where...broken lives are inherited..

Where...evenings shadow lies distressed on ripped rock and moss border..

Where...isolated youth walk through decades of frosted vision..

Where...small trees blanket fallen brick..

is the place language comes to die.
 

Fractured Acre - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography

Here -

Where...slim concrete staircases funnel nervous jealous glances..

Where...starched wrinkled skin sticks to stretched bone..

Where..young people die old..

Where...unopened door fades into peeling brick and small bottled yard..

Where...glum dance patters aggressively on fractured acre..

is the place language comes to die.

Hanging on to the Bruised Fence (1999)

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Extracts...

A stick tip tapping down the platform...sympathy and shock...crowds 

parting to bleak groans from grown men. Across the way, park fires 

are cracking an evil flicker and sidewalks glisten perspiring after 

another days heavy abuse.

*  *  *

Drunken shoes and ghosts remain dormant in a world gone crazy ... 

nightlife shovelled gleefully into demanding hands and ... gypsy 

souls drinking thimbles of wine and scuffles down the street.

Steve Coel

A series of Experimental Music+Word performances over a period of about 18 months or so, difficult to repeat even now. Still they happened and that is a good thing. This is a very short extract of a much longer Experimental Narrative. A bit out of my comfort zone, but again that too is a good thing. Steve Coel

Space Round The Back (2017)

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

There are no animals. No birds, no cats, no foxes. Just desolation, emptiness, conceit. This is the 'gap'. Some people look at this space and see the past. Others look at this 'gap' and imagine the future.

Some people are dealing with realities.

While others consider possibilities.

From Seeing This All Over: De City Tour - 2017/2018.

Road tours were a constant feature of...well life...for so many years. Meeting so many creative people, doing so many creative things. I could listen to the same person as you yet come away with differing ideas/viewpoints/skills...this was always a good thing.

Much new tech. has [for me] sort of killed the impetus to tour as much...but I'm always amazed at the sheer amount of really interesting/challenging/original stuff that continues to happen 'off grid' so to speak when I do/can.

Steve Coel

Iron Shelter - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Iron Shelter

Here -

Where...music is day time dead..

Where...beaten up strangled trees steal fenced air..

Where...pavement shy funeral cars are smokey..

Where...mapped walking is silenced by small group gossip..

Where...sleeping iron sided shelters are brick piled into bulldozed walls..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Apples and Pears - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Got another letter...just another reminder...just like all the others...

Then.

Times were different and some will still tell you that if you can remember what you were doing you weren't there. But I remember and it was great. Saturday nights dancing at the 'Apples and Pears' with all the other Mods and then off we'd all go Sunday morning to Southend or Margate for a laugh. For me though it only took one big mistake to make all the good things stop and that was seeing that stupid card in the pub window down the Old Kent.

All it said was - 'Fence - Good Money. Ask for Chick before closing'.

So, for a dare really, next Saturday, after listening to new singles with the girls down Woolies, I went over there and asked for Chick. Don't really know what it all meant back then.

Do now.

Now.

Down the market this afternoon people commented about my lovely sixties hairstyle and how it suits me. Some even asked after mother. But I don't like talking. Never did. So I just got on with things. I mean after all those years inside I learnt to keep myself to myself. And as for mother well least said really.

So here I am. I keep myself clean and live off the money I got given on release. It's what they owe me after all seeing as how I've kept my mouth shut all these years.

So when each new letter arrives, like the one today, I'll read it just once and put it away with others. There's no way round it. I am what I am...a rich woman with no life.

Pity mother isn't alive to share it with me really.

[Originally written/published/distributed - 1988, + Tin Collector: Collected MicroFlashFictions - 2015]

Notes: 

My experiences of old street market stalls that sold medals and badges, random shoes and Sunday morning leather jackets from Saturday night gig venues (if you lost your jacket you sort of knew where you could get it back the following day!).

On just one night out down the Old Kent - a large organised bare knuckle fight in a pub backroom, a person being chased out of another pub, and down the street, by someone with a samurai sword and another person being thrown through a window into a pub...good grief...

Steve Coel