The Yellow Digger
Train-track engineering and planned maintenance. Hard graft. And that cunting yellow digger wakes them up at 7am. With dirty little teeth, it smashes away at virgin concrete clean, looking for pipes that engineers need to find to do their jobs, to deliver food and money to their families, while alcoholics need more sleep to try
The Hi-Hat Solo
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, and the hi-hat solo. The audience watch her deliver from the shadows. “Hello Mr Jackson, your table is ready.” Last minute folly, the table reserved from the back of a deadbeat bus, a late-night jazz-hall at the end of a downtown boulevard. The sound terrific, the saxophone, the beating
Inducing a Migraine
She serves the warmest smile, and pulls a perfect pint, her eyes like a goddess. Like Dionysus. Red wine in abundance, warm in texture and plentiful by the glass. In my mind, the most beautiful shapes are enhanced by the toxins racing through my bloodstream, the vividness of my childhood like the Creation, space and
Antiquities
Pastel shades, gold and scarlet, splendid in the evening light. The room was largely decorative with plumes of grey and black and blue. They called it a masterpiece – the papers – and the writer, a collector of textiles and pottery, declared it a success. His wallpaper was a unique blend of colour depicting adventures
Broken Homes
It’s not easy avoiding them, on a dark path, in the early morning. Try in vain, the lack of light, but it all ends in tears. Hidden shapes or curled up leaves? One cannot tell as you trudge to the garage, to get your bike for the early train to London, knowing that soon the
The Artist
It was a private screening, no appointment needed. A final masterpiece. Like an artist’s art, it was modern with strokes of gaudy colour, thick applications, no planning or design. It was on a large canvas of magnolia, an ideal wash of matt, a clock against the border, framed complete with some brick exposed, wire from
The Priesthood
A dormitory and a single bed, two chairs and a corner window. Moments in solitude, time to reflect. In the distance, the low hills. Twenty-three weeks until the harvest and the priesthood, ploughing the fields, working the mill, the school of the soul. In between scriptures, he stacked bails and scrubbed floors in the old