1
I remember only yesterday
I hesitate I am lost
as the afternoon tumbles into evening
on the breeze of ink and exhausts
at the edge of spring a tiny crack down which to fall
I lie on my back and stare at the sky
things are going on as normal somewhere
arcs of dark against the darkening sky
and we forget that there were gods here once
that words were magic
the knowing of the names of things

7
These stillnesses are empty
Jet engine scrapes across the falling day
Passing like smoke across my fingertips
A sense of presence
Mourning my unspoken dreams
Place of elm and hawthorn
Carries me through unseen doorways
A postcard from an unremembered friend

9
Shaping mysterious some story
Stretching and extending out
Sunlight grey wash through dusty windows
Time slips
A journey with no destination
Glimpses of some greater collapse
Down alleyway and cul-de-sac
Looking for a way into the heart of things

11
The wind rises and dies down
Leaves fall across light from an open doorway
The sound of children playing in the street behind me
I turn around and see my darker face
A moment between breaths

Unoccupied a station platform
Insects scribble chaos and disorder
Hands raised shelter eyes against the sky
A small blue flower pressed flat
Desire opens
I am reflected in the buildings and the spaces in between
A kind of ghost
Embraces real and imagined
What I know slips from a broken string of beads
A line paints out unfinished

2
Somewhere something struggles with the power of growth, raises its head and sniffs the air and then sets off across a flatland strewn with the improbable remains of curry nights and kiddy cars. Across the sky the clouds are flecks of foam that slide like spittle running down a window pane and everywhere the smell is of defeat and other familiar over-extended themes that play in every song you whistle.

3
So this is where it begins lined up like a row of toy soldiers waiting for the marble cannon and we could be anywhere. The wind is cold and so we dream of temple girls in silk and jewellery and bursting like ripe figs in silver dishes where the juice runs down your chin and makes you wish you'd shaved. There's nothing much to say between a fried egg sandwich and the paper so the headlines are a welcome hiding place. It doesn't seem so long ago I used to go to church and I still do occasionally but not to pray just because it's dark and cool on Sunday afternoons and nobody can find me there. I sit down at the front with just a radio for company pressed up against my ear and pretend I'm on the phone. Outside they're playing cricket and polite applause hangs out across the field in washing lines. Cool and calculating with a pocket knife a length of rope I could swing from the steeple or I could just run across the beam and hang there in the wood and marbled dark and swing from side to side with just a creak passing the time. I think of long warm baths, tea in cafés and a sticky bun. There was a documentary on the telly about a reindeer holidaying in the south of France where villages refuse to die like fight and squeal in slaughterhouses so the knife won't go in straight and spend the week eating fish and vegetables. It's funny after all this time I can't remember what a field smells like, to stand out in the breeze and watch someone flying a kite called god or angel or happening. A rifle has two ends two faces and one of them is smoking about twenty a day but it's just a social thing. It would be nice to see a bit of colour somewhere other than the Sunday supplements but here we go again to wave the flag for England.

4
I'm strapped into a motorway of thoughts and I am speeding speeding speeding and there are no exits. I put my foot down hard upon the floor I burst my banks and the horizon rushes in to swallow me. It's straight and true and all that I can do is clench my teeth around the wheel until I crash. All the nuts and bolts of me are strewn across the landscape. For you the war is over. I let the lead run out and burn my palm the ratchet clicks and wrenches at my arm. There is a park down by the waterfront a smudge of green upon the footprint of the city. Around the edge the traffic a hundred thousand different instruments all tuning themselves up against each other, but in the centre is a burnt-out church where nothing grows but silence. A bird scratches its name in tiny strokes across the roll of sound. On a balcony across the street a cluster of new flowerpots gather around a single flowering tree. The windows slope in slightly one towards the other like a pair of frowning eyebrows.

5
An old man is a grubby moss-green cardigan and slippers is as grey as buildings. Sometimes he sits behind his shutters in the dark and dreams of picture-postcard Britain as it was when he was strong as trees. He lives in fingerless gloves now and he warms his hands around the kettle. A flock of yellow birds takes flight and they are much too yellow to be red. A yellow brighter than No Waiting signs and Belisha Beacons. Yellow of comedians and lunatics and artists. A man is lying underneath a paving slab which weighs upon his arms and chest. He's looking for his thoughts among the rubbish but everything seems second-hand and tatty at the corners. The pages smell of bacon grease and public toilets on a Saturday. The light is brighter than a thousand suns. Somewhere dark and unforgiving nuclear angels spread their wings and paint a soundless arc above the trees. I am speaking to you still but I have lost the power of language, I am falling towards a place that can't be named.

6
A woman sits behind the label on her forehead without moving she's afraid a Pentax click will seal her in will steal her soul I turn away I never saw a thing I break the surface for a breathing pause and dive back in a seal among the subway crush the hubbub without conversation only movement and machinery an all-sound an applause assault a wall-of-noise throws over overwhelms me bouncing ball along the pavement rolls across me streaky child bends down in different shades of green another hugs the plunging neck of a mechanical horse 20p for forty winks breaks loose and bucks and ploughs its way along a scar of fresh wet oily black a rag doll is discarded flung this way and that on spokes of a career bleached-out blonde is tugging at the sleeve her pretty twenties now a scar runs from her jaw across a cheek around an eye a knotted pink and purple cord a ridge she must surmount her memories are full of broken glass she's wrapped in soft brown wool a lamb and on her jeans a single pocket at the back has been removed and leaves a darker blue shaped like a shield she brandishes I look and see the eye carved from an effigy mahogany a polished face with gaps for eyes and nose and mouth hard triangle through which you see the world and time passing behind

8
There is a heart-shaped hole across the middle of the scenery that matches me exactly to the nearest shopping-mall the surfaces are clean and you can glide across them easily without aid of wheels leaving a trail of glistening Saturdays and faces pressed against the glass leave haloes of wet breath beyond a bank of televisions showing twenty David Nivens turn and wave and flash in perfect choreography all dancers soundtrack oily bubbles of piano trills and violins their rainbow film a taste you can't spit out a fountain lit by spotlights thick red smell of frying meat and onions when a horde of Saxon warriors sweep in across the coast and up the beaches like winter and an apple in my mouth or a banana bicycle-pumped up with steroids wrestles me into the mud mud gathers on my boots and they are heavier with every step animals have been known to beat their faces bloody on the wire and glass of cages and there was a question here to which I knew the answer but I can't recall it now

10
Chance meeting in an underpass an underbelly refugee a trenchcoat tied with string will struggle with the scales of balance weighs a tide-on-shingle slew of breath rasps in and out of him will laugh a crackstained laugh his stink of teeth collapsing like the mortar from an ageing wall a harbour wall holds back the sea hold back the sea and mantle mumblings spew and dribble down his chin like posters half torn off and flapping to reveal another shredded slogan underneath a hopscotch pavement half-erased brings back the sound of playground and a man sits down beside me on a train hair thick like a ploughed field speaks of heroes Winston Churchill says the same thing many times a rich seam of exhaustion I fall headlong into while he stays behind and talks about the end which isn't long in coming

12
Scratch and flare a match a pin-sharp smell a cooling draught intake of breath a gang of rough-and-tumble words and curses laughs a mass of football style and stubbing cigarettes with poise and menace turn towards the camera. We talk about the weather talk about the news imagine lives. A man is weeping so we cover up in case his hooks should snag against us pull on clothing. Heads turn smoothly and mechanically to watch the back and forth all tracking time a tennis match a blank screen flickering a digital display. Our institutions crumble like a pale white cheese. I became afraid of crowds and sat in empty cinemas for comfort. Three skinny dogs race whip-like over wasteland snaking through the grass an open goalpost without nets leans backward in a chill Atlantic wind. I taste of earth and ashtrays walk in opposite directions through newspapers like skirts around the steps of cinemas now boarded up against the smell of fish and chips. Red plastic crinkled and discarded melted chocolate palm she eats out of his hand. Groping a wall to find the switch a strip light blares against a dessicated makeup thick and hollow faces angular jaws clenched around tower-blocks of loss and travel. Laughter flaps like a tarpaulin stretched and snapping anger is synthetic and available in six washable colour combinations.

I remember only yesterday
I hesitate I am lost
as the afternoon tumbles into evening
I lie on my back and stare at the sky
arcs of dark against the darkening sky
and we forget that words were magic

anthony shearn

the body speaking