The city skyline
so far removed from home
chimney pots and aerials replaced by
redbrick buildings amidst fume stained concrete towers
rooftops infested with rusting air condensers
clematis and virginia creeper replaced by
conduit and cables, the ivy of the city clings to every facade

country life contrast
urban decay cannot last
function over form

The Amstel. Christ.
Kilner jars full of fireflies
     on redbrick windowsills.
Hormone therapy. Jesus.
Angel boys from Europe
     trailing around behind me wondering -
and not caring - what the hell is in my pants.
Cold morning breezes
     on scarred chest tissue and needle puncture marks.
Rows and rows of bicycles
     and a fluttering pink scarf in the wind.
Roaring screams and sexless smiles
     cold split knuckles and nonchalant breath.

I was brought up in Western Leeds,
Almost two miles from the nearest cow or sheep.
In sprawling suburbs:
Row after row of smoke stained redbrick slums.
We had our fields:
Jungles of Rose Bay Willow Herb
(Fireweed to the Americans)
On former demolition sites.
Our childhood spears were honed
From fireweed spears.

Our house was in a terrace
On “School Street”,
Where we took baths in the sink
And crept to outside toilets
In the dark of the “back yard”.

Those days were punctuated
By the “Yie Yie” blare
From the local factory siren.
A deafening sound.
And by endless hammering
From the scrapyard nearby.

But we loved our dripping and bread,
And our walks to the sweet shop.
Playing hopscotch on those stone “flags”
Along the sides of the cobbled street
Under old Victorian gas lamps
Straight from Narnia.

I recall crying on our return from the coast
At a dismal scene
Of soot shrouded trains
On tortured railway lines.

But I also feel nostalgia
For those heady days
Of childhood innocence.
Wearing a cardboard box as a space suit,
And running around
During a “New Year’s Revolution”.
Happy Days.

Paul Butters

He lived in a room with no windows
He hung pictures on the wall
Of driveways, cars and hedgerows
Of redbrick homes and even a town hall

But soon he began to miss a view
That offered some variety
Nothing breathed and nothing grew
At the centre of his dead society

So he moved a couple in next door
And an accountant the other side
An old lady got the house with the green front door
A large family had the garden with the slide

The postman liked to come at noon
A bus passed on the hour
He saw children playing in the afternoons
And lawns brighten under spring showers

It didn’t exist beyond his doors
This idyllic, sunny street
But now that he had some neighbours
His new home felt complete

But like all things of beauty
The cracks began to show
Reality likes to exercise duty
Down to the smallest bungalow


One day the silver car was missing
And, when watching the road for more
He the saw the man next door was kissing,
Mrs Across the Road, not Mrs Next Door

A while later, there came the shouts
And the gasps of laboured crying
The street knew what the row was about
And so Mrs Across the Road was caught lying

The kids were put in the car, confused
Bras were strewn across the front lawn
She begged him to stay but he refused
And an ambulance was there by dawn

Mrs Across the Road was dead
They found her hanging from the ceiling
And Mrs Next Door had a cut on her head
That gave him a queasy feeling

Vandals came, the police followed
The old lady’s front windows were broken
The had tulips wilted and the people wallowed
He watched the decay, alone and heartbroken

He decided to move away from this street
The sobbing through the walls plagued his evenings
A new set of windows, new neighbours to meet
The real world could be conquered by leaving


But when moving day came, and he arrived
He felt suddenly much less sure
When he noticed that, well and revived
Mrs Across the Road living next door

From then, wherever he went they came
His neighbours’ rows and cries were haunting
He moved some more, but it was always the same
His world was inescapable, the fiction taunting

Eventually, his patience snapped
Which led him to a more physical hell
Windowless once again, he could never adapt
To the bars on the door to his cell

The rains came.
No matter.
The Irish kids with Hebrew names
still took to the lot behind the redbrick
apartments to play a close-quarters
game of baseball.
From home plate to first base
the distance was ten yards.
From first to second, fifteen.
Runners placed one hand
on a rusted iron pole, once
used as one half of a clothesline,
a makeshift third.
Their frequency of play
rendered the space between
bases grassless.
And in the rain on that September
day, the lines became sludge.
The muck claimed shoes
of earnest feet, badged the
legs of the best hitters.
Hey batta. Hey batta.
Thunder overhead and
all around.
A lean, blonde-haired
boy, all legs and arms,
got a piece of the ball
on his first pitch.
Upward into the clouds,
upward into the invisible.
He took first, started for
second.
The others kept waiting
for the ball to come back
down.

Spontaneous yet flexible
Confident and malleable.
Able to go with the times
And go with the flow,
Finger on the pulse
Presentations to show.
Laser pointers and
Laser printers
Pressed for time.
Nothings here
But what here's mine.

Climb over colleagues
Through Ivy leagues
And Redbrick universities.
Shadowed by a letter.
A,
B,
C,
D?

"And extra-curricular activities?"
"Literature?"
"Theatre?"
"Ah...well......I see........."

"......Well....there is an opening.......
.....Not great hours I'm afraid.....
.....But the pay is competitive...............
...Beyond the market rate......."

An inward sigh and a signature.
Uniforms and moral aperture.
We do what "must be done"
And whisper other soft lies
While we hide from the Sun.

There's this bell that rings redbrick on days I stay in.
This bell that rings sings to me as a clubfooted horse.
Brassbeating hooves are as a chest at nightfall: Russian dolls are as real
as people: Everything is all alike as the "and"
and "and" that Bishop feared. There
is nothing in us from catching fishes then returning their swim. There
is nothing in us from drinking from seawater, from moth-tear, from
the moonlight that creepers in there when your mouth
     figures itself
as bell or foot: I should wake up. I should wake.  
I should, I should.

amplify my struggles
i'm your personal sound system
i'll play my whining on repeat
i'm a broken ****** record

staring at the ceiling fan
stirring up my existence
lately i’ve been dozing off bitter Jim whiskey

reminds me of my time in UK
it smells like my cramped dorm room
with fairy lights on the window
and blood on the white plastic of my trash bin

redbrick home, but it’s cold under the covers
and the sheets are stained
with the smell of coconut oil in your hair

you hold me in your arms sometimes
when you feel like it
i pretend the other days don't exist
so i only recite the good ones to myself

i'm on a loop
repeating the same 16 beats over and over again
until the end of this ******* party

one city after another
they're all exactly the same
just differently arranged letters, same corner stores
different colored clothing, same people

i'm the same everywhere
a puzzle piece from a box
that probably doesn't even exist

Shots were shot inside your walls
by hands too hot to stop the fall
of bodies, wretched and angelic,
hanged and carefully laid upon your plains.

Deeds were done in the redbrick corners of your streets. Only mourners then remained in the memories of pain, and the folklore fear born by your command still stands to stain your hands.

Shots were shot to echo through the mountains. My idea of a summer death was real and, Alas, the trusting eyes of childish lies felt space-time tear and turned themselves to glass.

I cleaned my childhood home in honey light - a flight away from you, through pain. I fight your urge to overpower money and stand tall,
crouching low to scrub the stone floor of many childhoods' home.

My ears no longer scream in pain of nightmare visions, still seeing the shots you fired. Seeing your fire no more, I long for lore and love of mice. This year I'm under watercolour skies and listening to stories of light and newborn lies.

An unblemished core resonates in right quarters
even thus un-robed Cleopatra's Needle is still a worthy edifice
call not the stigmata a bleeding wound but a penance in glory
of a blameless man that blessed with truths the world disavowed

The honor of oneness is never bestowed on heathens
love is in the heart of the circumspect lovers when lust they mean
to hide in fear and gladden the niggling voids of the lost minds
where words trip off tongues to dress carcasses in white charades

The sordid debts of your ancestors remains unpaid
in front gardens with redbrick walls the bearded call to towers high
your birth fabrics in tatters while your veins flows contaminated
your children and you dance in salt marshes zen ten nooses awaits

Bloated on ignorance and with asinine bravado
the condemned facing the hangman trills, meet me at six for a pint
I have a date with destiny but it can wait, what do you say
One would say, you think I have problems, wait till you see yours