Tag: writing
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Soap / Eternity / Rendering
INSTRUCTIONS ON A BAR OF NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY SOAP Do what you want, live how you want. Get it behind your ears and all over the skin you want. Do not think about machines. Read what you will, focus your eyes on grime and slime and free will. Or grace,…
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Our Wings
Fair is fair, and clear is clean. Clean air is clear, clear air is clean, though I fathom the factories fair fouled it up. Particulate, exudate, aerosols, mud, benzene, dioxins, DDT, blood. Filthy factory runoff grimes up our groundwater. Oozes thin. Gurgles thick. We slide and we slip on greased oilcloth earth. Our dirt is…
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Liquorice
With drains for legs the rain runs off you And though it’s always cold, (with lead for legs) it’s not wet. Black roots are hard but damp liquorice runs like mascara Making pandas of eyes Heavy like the lid that the scent lifts on memories as distant as feet, Ash boots the fag ends…
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When It Breaks
When the side of the building falls, it is a spring morning, April, not yet dawn. And there is no warning. The crack was there for a long time, all up the side, visible on every floor. Everything’s broken, all broken. You can’t worry about these things. What Sondra’s mother told her: You stop worrying….
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There are 355 letters in Genesis 4:9-13
An excerpt from a sequence of 31 perfect anagrams of Genesis 4: 9-13 in which Cain shares an apartment with Father K. in a disputed territory. Genesis 4: 9-13 And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And He…
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Filth
Covered in filth, a disastrous clumsy brain excavates deep to identify causality. Distrusting and perilous, Broken mirror images echo an unsung nursery rhyme in an incomprehensible language. For unclean, as impure, as spoilt, This one is a crummy little one. She has not made any effort whatsoever, and now has the nerve to…
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Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy
The Human Rights Act (1998), which enacted the European Convention of Human Rights (1950), has been in the firing line almost since it was passed. Some opposition is rooted in its ability to protect dangerous suspects, like giving alleged terrorists the benefit of a fair trial or delaying their extradition. For others, dislike is linked…
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Proper Burial / Clean Machines / Wheat Head
Proper Burial Each thing we take from the earth requires we bury something of equal value. Dinosaurs buried each other, where they fell, feathered, and massive. Still later, we bundle whole ships with furs for warmth, and spices to trade beneath the earth. One age buries another, patting dirt upon civilization. Dogs understand the…
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Do Not Touch the Artworks
From 1938-9 and for a period of over fifteen months, a cleaner at The British Museum set to work on the Parthenon Marbles. Using cooper tools, the worker began to clean the marble figures and friezes, believing their bisque-like façade to be unwanted dirt. All manner of scandal, disciplinary action and juridical affairs ensued, with…
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The Home Hairdresser, Wakefield
Holding her hair over the sink, the water runs red; it trickles down her temple. It gets on lunch’s dirty plates. The towels are black, the floor beige. Don’t touch your head, you’ll get pink fingers! Put these gloves on, and just comb it out whilst I finish off Emma’s fringe. It splashes. Hair fragments…
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Editorial: Clean Unclean
My side of the desk is scrupulously clean. The other half is a mess of dust and papers, temporarily abandoned books, a pair of tights, a lump of local granite. The line that separates the two is not as clear as I’d like. From the other side, my wife’s stately, slender Mac spaceship turns its…