Back to index of Nerve 8 - Spring 2006

Poetry Page

Creative writing compiled and edited by Ade Jackson
All submissons by e-mail to: Backtothemachinegun@hotmail.com

"Roadworks" by Eleanor Rees

Sometime around midday.

The tarmac is biting at my ankles.
Well-lit sky snaps fast and short
as the street opens up to tumble
me into an underground
of corpses and snowdrift
and horses with gold faces
and pretty girls with bees in their hair
and silverfish with steel legs
and smiling boys with tattooed penises
and wet hearts in jars like flowers or flames
and invisible ledges of air
and rock face of baby’s faces
and heavy tongues loll like dogs
and tall ships crash on cavern walls
and underground rivers clot
a golden fleece moulds on a stalactite
skeleton warriors waltz in the dark corners.

Atop and heavy, Liverpool tightens, glowers.
He disapproves. I’ll be driven out of town.
A drill snaps down on our skulls
We shatter like shells.

Sometime after dark

I know that hurt
colliding as dust
over bones,

the poor lady’s beer-addled bones,

in the dark comes before

the bee hive city squeeze

in the street comes before

avalanche of brick.

Thick blood
comes before
the fall.

My city is wearing costume jewellery tonight
glittering and unreal.

"Oedipus-in-Boots" by Janette Stowell

In thigh-high leather
he fancies himself as one
cool motherfucker.

"High" by Dam Robinson

I got high with her highness on the dirtieth floor of a post shabby hotel the midnight royale.

The fizzin' city and the beak were beatin', taxi cabs, moon buggies beepin', E kicked in as her legs fell carelessly, effortlessly apart

Find myself snatchin’ for her majesties pleasure, we're amused and laughin as the neon signs flashin', comms towers pulsin' sendin' vibrations through ebony singed stars

Sparkles in mirrors from your crown causes shiver, my regal ridden body quivers with illegality, you got me dreaming of bionic sex and vice verse

Shamefully shimmering in ermine I’m freakin’, I need to speed and be leavin'

Reach the bolted door, perceptions all changed I gotta get out of this face, never mind what the butler saw man I’m sore, junk makin’ me nervy an' raw

Stumble stinkin’ into a ha-loud hall, ignorin' her majesties call. Haunted, hunted by decrepit falls into featherdown carpets and psychedelic wallpaper stripes

I'm out into fresh air which hits as guilt and shame kick my ass into the gutter, snipin', gripin', gaspin', frightened.

Cities whizzin, chill sirens and neon freezin i'm throat deep in freeks and the beats are baskin over the square in metrop-olizei state

Little laughter jingles, drunks linger,
Sickening hot dog hot stench stings, Taco bells ringin and white heeled women fallen like the cities crumblin' arches.

Crisp air filters from rumbling subs beckons exile off my Main street high.

But man what have I done? Slept with a woman that wanted me too. Got high, drifted by, smiled and felt good and at ease and at peace with my peaceful woman.

Took some time out for love and a few a those special royal treatment fucks, aw shucks

Get over it, just another small erosion a minor explosion, shit it ain’t like I raped a servant or anything.

"When The Music’s Over" by Ade Jackson

Maybe Our Lady’s got a bitchin’ eye
for the hard American boys
picking out the pansies
by the Pont des Invalides,
flicking dead matches in the Seine;

maybe the damp soil and flowers
on Jimbo’s grave in Pere Lachaise
make it a patch like anyone else’s
(apart from that pair of mauve floral panties
pledged sexlessly to the rain).

You can always make allowances
for the tramp tipping kittens
from a rough stitched sack
on the Rue St. Jaques
like he’s discovered the other secret of birth…

But young men shouldn’t die of heart attacks.
Especially not in Paris;

definitely not in the bath.

"Parkland" by Eleanor Rees

Skating through trees,
you could break your neck on the moon.

Like a paper doll you expand your body on the breeze
shadow after shadow.

These versions of you hesitate, sit down,
climb trees, play Frisbee, give birth.

There is nobody else in the park but you,
reclining on benches, naked, smiling,

running between branches, distances,
mending ship’s sails on the dilapidated bandstand -

you make rope in the avenues between cherry trees,
weave it round the pedestals of statues.

You wear a crinoline and row armoured carriers across the lake,
swans at your ankles like terriers.

You break your neck on the moon:

exercise horses on the sandy track looped around the edge of the park,
deliver laundry to old women in houses with broken windows.

You lie in the grasses in the small hills beside the streams,
touch yourself whilst looking at the sky.

You run naked in darkness across the open parkland,
starlight still wet on your back.