Short Fiction: Experiments + Proposals - Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Clear your mind, listen carefully and don't stop breathing.
Pure Bliss..Dock Road..Indian Harbour..Blue Monday..Big Picture..Control Me..Keep Rolling..Everything Now..Red River..Rootless Tree..Winged Isle..Lockdown Lady..Tide Times..Third Wind..Main Fact..Not So Sleepy..Beat the Storm..Afraid of Nothing..Pirate King..Famous Dynasty.
Clear your mind, listen carefully and don't stop breathing.
Butcher King..Like the Sound..Get the Appeal..Western Starlet..Atlantic Storm..Real Dude..Free Dancer..Melody of Life..Global Art..Perfect Rose..Poetry and Art..Fun Light..Hungry Tiger..You Say Nothing..Union Gap..Like a Demon..Enduring Love..Stand Up and Fight..Walk to Freedom..The Big Story.
Once you bypass
the last starched lightning tree
you enter a hillside world
of midnight stream
and border wire music.
Here, across shilling debris,
early shadow
and blisters of high mist,
nature composes movement
from iron and broken bone.
heb deitl
Steve Coel
Walking Notes
Steve Coel
An 11.59 Publication
Time has no future along forgotten paths. So be it.
The Mercy Path can appear to be grim, tired, depressing. It is however, often beautiful.
Here,
where young people
never return
and there
are no paths,
is the place
language goes to die,
and old people
still stop to watch
lost cars
drive pass.
Cut
into bitter grey stone
by masters of dead trades,
is your complete life story.
Brief like you,
words from broken parents
target the elders,
who created your passing.
heb deitl
Steve Coel
Walking Notes
Steve Coel
An 11.59 Publication
So many things around me, in the local and wider community, seem broken, fractured...
Paper Towns
All along the Mercy Road
in six month empty paper towns,
elderly people in torn slippers
walk painfully down rusty nail footpaths.
Their cotton bags : half full
hold forgotten out of date tins of meat and dried fruit,
as they chat to each other about childhood, romance
and warm hands.
Life is ending here
these places once called home
and memories will soon be forgotten
as nature wipes away all marks of living.
In regulation daytime armour
cracking with coarse whispers
and yesterdays broken promise,
the young girl pushes
her vape shadowed baby carrier
past steamed up shop windows.
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 slap
into one off needles
that litter fishless gutters
and where even on dry days
the pavement is damp.
There is a singular peace to be found in spaces where nature is busy removing memory.
In the nick of time power station reflection
you upgrade yet another dog end
and once again check the hidden shank
in your Clink Hotel grey.
A long time is short here,
because outside nobody stands still.
And routines are dictated by the coded message
of engine, animal and whistle
and by shadows that appear
and disappear on park borders.
Walking Notes
Steve Coel
An 11.59 Publication
Day Time
The crump of ancient motor and distant shriek of bird split open the clipped hedges and gate of curved fields and cupped minds.
Here, where brown water fallen from rusty pipe clings to chipped rock, is where sweaty paths lead up into singing overgrown wired woods that close in on long forgotten cylindered reminders of hard labour and childhood.
Night Time
Stepping inside the broken windowed shopfront, you walk in silence, smoke in hand, through ankle cement, wooden glue, canal wire and rusty nail.
Walking Notes
Steve Coel
An 11.59 Publication