Rugby, Warwickshire
16/10/2015

Unholy streets of G-d, liquid tobacco,
gentle froth and steam
from the coffee estuary, split beneath the clock tower
on the idle hour; more pigeons than people,
more buildigs than choices
on this small-town, charity shop parade.

The women are still beautiful, still unattainable,
still on the brink of a breakdown
in the most confident dress.
Street-pastors carry the drunks home,
the street-cleaners appear by the afterparty,
clear out the old bottles
before the commuter picks up cigarettes
from the newsagents that never rests.

Tattoo parlours, barber shops,
Christmas on the radio come Hallowe'en-
this is the town that crazy built:
war-time poetry, jet propulsion,
chief inventor of sport,
of mild alcohol addiciton.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
hundreds of places to hide away;
a foreign face in a sea of family and friends.
Landlocked, gridlocked,
centrally located but left out on a limb;
this town clings to the tracks,
it's avenues of escape
the only margin to keep the residents
out of mind and in their place.

But this is where I grew up,
always more car-park than parkland,
my first steps on Campbell Street,
on Armstrong Close,
first time I broke the law on Bridget Street,
on Selborne Road.
I'd push my bike all around this town,
no stopping off for a smoke,
for to get my fix-
I'd push on and on past graveyards and open bars
without a second gance.

Now, it's all shooters and soul-singers
and happenstance;
chicken wings on a late-night binge,
a box of wine, a night of sin,
wake up in shame,
life's a guessing game
and guess what, you'll never win.

Chewing gum, patches,
vapour that scratches the back of my throat,
nicotine in my blood,
you know, I'm trying my best to get clean.
Blister packs of vitamins, bowls of fruit,
buying coconut water over the counter-
green tea by the rising moon,
incense sticks and vegetables in the garden,
yet by the time night rolls on by
the locus of my eyes, they darken;
I'll be back on the beer,
I'll be smoking a carton.

This is the town that crazy built,
even the flowers by the roadside wilt,
cement factory, hum-drum poverty,
post-code belonging to Coventry,
kept out of the war
by a matter of minutes,
kept from the future
by corporate interest.

Hospital lights, supermarket glow,
I can't remember the last time
I wasn't loaded with chemicals
every time I get home,
every time I sign out
and put my head on the pillow,
I see familiar streets, familiar signs,
the job centre, the floodlights,
the 12% lager, the twist of lime.
I struggle with rhyme,
I struggle most days to get out of the house,
but at night, I know, that sea of doubt
is a river of light, to ruin my liver,
to spike my fever, to calm me down.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
and this world it don't spin,
it just throws me around.

Rugby town, of landlocked streets,
of wasted field and barefaced retreat;
I miss you now, in absence of a friend,
I miss you now, in the verse that I lend.

Suburb grove, of sleepy mist,
oh, battered housewife, oh blastocyst;
you will remain in place forevermore,
and forevermore, you'll become a bore.

Holding cell, of sporting fame,
you stole my dreams but gave me my name;
I think of you: a multi-storey view,
of happy faces, of which there is few.

Still, my town, in debt's nightgown,
the shop-fronts vacate, we're feeling down;
these streets are poisoned with names of the past,
each memoir to teach: nothing's built to last

Rugby town, of weary folk,
the private school is a private joke;
I miss you now, as I sleep through the day,
I miss the old walks, and all that you'd say.

Old market town, the aftermath,
of British summer, suicide bath;
of open mics and closing the shutters,
of waking graveyards, sleeping in gutters.

Hopeless climbs, of dreary times,
of childhood state and nursery rhymes;
each time that I come home, I know you less,
becoming a stranger in my redress.

Clock tower, chiming, chiming loud,
singing for history long and proud;
of Rupert Brooke and the question: “what if?”
What if I was born to some lover's tiff?

To some large and friendless town,
to some body of land, which I drown;
to some active place of pain unknown,
to some place that I'll not gauge that I've grown,

oh Rugby dear, stay with me,
let  me live on the periphery;
and although this town seems terribly dull,
it could be worse – I could live in Hull.

With noon’s grim call, I rise too late.
Condensed sunlight through greys and slate.

Awake with a steadfast hunger for sleep,
to push out these pains that so make me weep.

Each day is rushed to a ****** too soon,
like some alleyway lover, ‘neath the moon.

‘Neath the moon, I give into wine;
vessel over my wholesome Tyne.

It’s all I have, to numb this pain,
pattern my thoughts, order my brain.

And with self-disgust, I discuss the past,
self-talk: The only friendship built to last.

I think on us all, and what we have been,
a filtered film-still, or some beauty queen,

when life weren’t fair, but fortunes true,
when the sky still ran that azure blue,

love no more than a hungry kiss,
some manufactured teenage bliss.

And lo, I’ve no friend to confide my heart,
each pound of muscle to create my art,

each longing of longing for reader’s love,
and my origins with the stars above.

No, reader, my dear, you’re all that is left,
to align my soul, frequently bereft.

So, read not this page as poetry,
but of the union of you and me,

we sit in life so clumsily
and yet with poise, we love so endlessly.

Etymology,

                  Spanish.

  First appeared  

      on a gravestone

             in Warwickshire, England.

       Means:  

         'loveable,'
                      
                      'have to be loved,'

                                         'deserving of love.'

All technicalities aside,
I'm not with you for your
name. That'd be like saying,

'I'm here for the free cheesecake,*
but make sure it calls itself a cheesecake,
because I trust cheesecake, but not the
moon when it questions my insanity.
Frightens me with the prospect of a
normal life.'

I haven't found the answer yet.
I haven't been looking. I've been
too busy loving you, until one day
I woke up and realized 'its always
in the last place you look.' I'd been
nuzzled in your chest for hours
before I noticed I'd found the
most important meaning
in life.


Amanda.

Etymology,

             Spanish.

        First appeared on a gravestone

                  in Warwickshire, England.

Means:

                'loveable,'

                             'have to be loved,'

                                              'deserving of love.'

i'd really like to punch Roger Boyes in the face... that kind of therapy talk akin to Fight Club... i'd really love to punch Roger Boyes' smile off...  can't stress how much i'd like to punch his face, simply to add the mascara of plum with that grin of his... i'll say it one more time for the therapeutic reasons, akin to 1916 and northern irish zombies; god, i'd love to punch that man into a Picasso.

why... the pristine supposed involvement of
Colonel Kentucky in Syria...
leave them to it! your opinions are just invests in war,
look at you, cooked-up in a semi-detached
in Warwickshire... i'm sure the select journalists
ageing have moved from the column to
the opinion section, because they are *proper
bulldog bred to choke a Belgian waffle
and *****-up a moth for a tartan pattern;
******* in the Caribbean - pilot features added
to the wingspan about what i wouldn't integrate into
even if Dickens or Shakespeare was an ice cream moment
of melting into a society... honey pooh...
you want the community experience?
abolish the strategy for urban areas and Greek-likened
free-city states... you want a community?
move to a village... no immigration will change
that demographic, village life means village life,
and villagers... and your neighbour's breakfast
on your table given the gossip at the hairdressers...
get a prim and the low-down;
that English, functioning atheism:
left hand (a-, the indefinite article) - and right hand
(the-, the definite article) - Kula Shaker'***** -
but i'd really love to punch Roger rather than Gandhi...
for Aleppo... i guess it's fun and morally pristine
to serve a comment along with oysters away
from the tabloid section of Loners of the newspaper,
a poet best dissects a newspaper -
did Cromwell ask for aid? Charles got the Chaplin
chop - Russia assured everyone, the support
of the Armstrong - because Colonel Kentucky and
every other entrepreneur of capitalism was not
part of bookmarking the last few pages of the Syrian
civil war... is that because no English civilians
knew the reality of war that Syrians concerned themselves
with? hence the punch for the journalist...
how about infiltrating a far-right perspective to counter
the spread of Jihad in Europe? being an island will
hardly help, as pseudo-****** said: now the channel
tunnel... let the tanks roll in.
England is under this fake impression that America
cares two-shots of whiskey three shakes of the dice
about its opinion... it doesn't...
America is pro-Israel.. England is quasi-pro but by
majority not wishing the Palestinians to experience
a 2000 year old Exodus... so here come the balaclavas
with black & white or red & white Houndstooth patterns.
still... i'd love to punch that Roger into a tombstone-flat-face.
leave them to it! it's a civil war! none of us
were ever Syrian civilians... we were civilians elsewhere...
in the green mint-fresh rolling hill countryside...
this isn't your son's Special Ops first-person shooter
on a computer screen... **** me... let the gym meat-heads
pump the iron... you a covert disciple of the diminishing
English high-street franchise... you know
that when a franchise begins to become turned FLAWED
it invests in adverts - capitalism's exposure comes
with advertisement, when a company is on the fault
line of bankruptcy or making profit, if decides on
an advertisement project, a crusade - to rekindle
public trust, i.e. naive handshakes all round.

today that pull toward sleep but not-sleep—

rest

the coppice crowns a slide of green
—so very English,
as the seven-four-seven strikes a stave against the blue vault;
a tabula rasa for a new century’s march,
but the sky remains silent to all that effort
to get from one horizon to the next,
the day comes round soon enough anyhow
—so very now

the jet plane’s pendulum of time-equals-money
centres me and any thoughts I had of making
that walk back to Warwickshire and adolescence
vanish to be replaced by equations

of distance over time,
the number of seats for the lucky few,
the price we have to pay
to escape ourselves…

Those fat beams of sunshine sickened me, and I felt as though my insides had been rotting quickly as I strode further. As much as I wanted to love the morning walk, I could not help feeling ill from the hot breeze licking at my face. It held me breathless, pulling me away from my sweet memories of winter, scratching at every mound of cleanliness that my early shower had given me. I hate being here, I whispered in silence. The sun has always been a sign of sickness to me; its hotness a disfigured existence that has been but a threat to my presence. As more shriveled dust traveled to my cheeks, all I could think of was running away as fast as I could, to the very place where the sun could no longer find me; where winter would be mine once more—and eternally this time. As much as I wanted to feel at home, my heart could lie to me no more; for it would not find its sojourn in the new Jakarta. I had to go again, this I knew at that very moment, to fly over the moon and retrieve my autumn from the stars.  

My day started in a daze; the steps I took to the workroom felt nearly weightless. I did not take a glimpse of a single thing along the stairway; in unconsciousness did I slide my chair away from my desk and sit in an awkward position. I was a piece of exhaust, haunted by the sun’s angry rays; the sun brought not light but blindness to my sight. However, this was what happened every morning since I had returned; too often that I was almost unable to identify who I was anymore. All the moves around me seemed like a dream. Yet, now I realise that even though they had been a reality, I would still have considered them a dream. I opened my laptop and started typing into the keyboard. Typing the words that I did not even want to read. Typing into the unknown universe that I would not seek myself in. The universe that I would never find in literature; and so would never be mine.

I had never lived a reality since I had seen Jakarta back again, this is the truth. I daydreamed about a distant place often; one that would not expose me to dire rays of sunshine nor plaster me to the routines I could never fit myself in. The bitterness of having left England washed over me once more this morning. Perhaps I could never win my winter back. Perhaps I would never return. Perhaps it all has left, once and for all. Perhaps I would always be alone. I had but lived in my literature, my poetry, the stories I wrote, all along; and theirs was the only air that keeps me breathing. I would think of the moors of Yorkshire once more, beside the cold boughs of Warwickshire that I had known—and let myself dance through the greenness that I would never forget.

Hazel Dagley is a friend of mine.  She keeps me laughing, all of the time.
She has an electrifying personality.  When you feel down, she's there to set you free.
My friend is from Warwickshire, England, with a special accent.  She speaks very unique, just to give you a hint.
She love her students, that she teaches at School.  They respect her highly, as they obey the rules.
She seem to love, everyone around.  She's always encouraging, freeing from being bound.
By, Sandra Juanita Nailing

to go to bed or
not to go to bed
ay...is that your question?

lips kiss lips
they the wordless
answer

shhh...shush...shush
our bodies only
speak for us

the hush as love
discovers us
to our selves

the rest is...scilens
as Shakespeare would spell it
in his Warwickshire way

we the king and queen
of infinite space
bound in a nutshell