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

The Wet Shift, Paper Towns, Dead Air into Warm Harp

The Wet Shift [ Extracts ]

Time was he'd be with the other workers heading south after another all night wet shift. But not this morning. This morning he's still invisible in his toasted brickwork hat and waking up after a nights sleep on the butchers slab that rests buried in the dark silted low tide beach alongside the fast moving gravy.

Busy checking that the hidden key and twist are still in his dead mans waistcoat he slowly begins his own journey south of the river to his cardboard hostel room, electric sheets, liquid breakfast and a day full of grey moods, careless thought and burnt cake.

Paper Towns

All along the Mercy Road in six month empty paper towns elderly people in torn slippers walk painfully along iron grit footpaths. Carrying cotton bags half full with out of date tins of meat and dried fruit they chatter to each other about childhood, romance and warm hands. Life for each of them will end here, these places once called home, and their shared memories will soon be forgotten as nature wipes away each doorstep dream and bridal curtain.

Dead Air into Warm Harp

Since I bust my legs down The Works I's been spending my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be told. Lost everything now I has. Still; once I's got enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie in The Vulcan. And; more often than not, I ends up chatting to the old girls warming themselves up before they goes and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury. Clink Hotel across the road tends to get noisy in the afternoon so I wanders back into town for a bit of a stretch and goes and cadges a cup of tea from Asteys before I heads back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk. Really I doesn't have time to feel sad. Not me. Trick I finds is to forget past and stick to what I knows. Needs change of shoes mind. Probably find some come Sunday in box side of hostel door.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel

Bitter Fingers

Here -

Where...bitter fingers rub endlessly into painted brick..

Where...teenage anger lasts long into retirement..

Where...happiness is solitary, forgotten and distant..

Where...closed shops remain open..

Where...failure becomes a habit..

Where...values are challenged and always disputed..

Where...machine winnings replace job prospects..

Where...harmony is seen between broken shop trolley, mid-summer puffa jacket and cannabis vape..

Where...sunday morning dead mans clutter waits for eager hands..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel