Words Down 05-Jun-2023
Kae Tempest Week
This week was a good week. Often I find I have to really dig to pull something out of the speedwriting prompts but this time they all just sprang almost unbidden to mind based on what was provided.
Speed Writes
1. They crest the hill at last
The engines wailing as the wheels spin
Then it's all downwards
The race for the finish
Skittering sideways like possessed crustaceans
Chasing the last shrimp in the world
2. Jasmine on the wind
Or is it honeysuckle?
I was never very good at identifying
floral scents. Particularly overpowered
as in this case
by petrol and cordite and smoke and death
as the troops advance and we retreat
and our dreams fall around us.
3. All night I lie awake with it
This pain in my mind that taunts me
The things I will never achieve
The things for which I will always yearn
The things that they have, but which I cannot.
The pain sometimes drops
but overall
the increase is linear
It will take me eventually
4. I just woke up and it was here
An unassuming box in brown corrugated cardboard.
I do not know what is inside it,
Nor how it got here.
The sender label says simply "Schroedinger".
Do I hear intermittent quiet meowing,
or did I imagine that?
5. I feel you like a threat.
And yet I know you are the source
of all safety.
Perhaps my fear is of losing your shelter,
of you deciding to take your protection
elsewhere.
Deep inside, I know you are mine forever
but the primal chimp in my brain
fears you turning out to be
someone I know you're not
SOURCE POEM : Sequence by Kae Tempest
Empty street beside the railway at night,
Spot-lit pigeons pecking at dropped bones,
Low houses lean in like a family
Portrait. Clapped-out van pulls up, the music
Playing loud. Drunken laughter from inside.
Woman clambers out with swollen suitcase
And goodbyes them all. She stops at her door
Looks up for a moon she can't see. Her eyes
Rank milk. The good times cling to her shoulders.
Long features, like a stretched mirror.
There, on the doorstep, she has the flooding
Sense that she is nothing but a sequence
Of events remembered differently by
Everyone involved. What she does not sense
Is the queue of silhouettes, stood behind,
Who pick up their right hands when she picks up
Her right hand and kick out their left legs when
She kicks out her left leg. when she calls out
To a great power she does not yet believe in
And asks to be opened, they raise their
Voices in solemn chorus behind her.
Exercise: Set a scene like this, build a picture and add detail, set up anticipation
I started this then ended up turning it into a throwback to my "I just woke up and it was here" prompt above, imagining this as the unseen route to how it just came to be there.
Title : Undefined, Uncertain, Unseen
A liminal space. Grey tarmac, dark buildings.
Shutters closed, no movement other than when wind blows
Through the discarded wrappings and cigarette packets
Scattering them slightly, then gathering them back up
Into dense heaps. The sound of an engine approaching
Before the motorcycle comes into view
And stops. The rider dismounts, looking around
For something. They appear bloated, stuffed into their
Leathers and their armour, and their helmet
Which they now remove, their breath forming mist
in the cold night air. Steam rising from their
Sweaty matted hair. Taking the key, they open
The plastic luggage carrier and remove a normal
Cardboard box. It does not look heavy
But it does seem sturdy as the rider places it
On the pavement. One label adorns the top
Surface. "Property of E. Schroedinger."
The street lights form multiple images
Of the rider on the road surface, all identical,
All moving as one,
Facing in different directions. Of the box,
There are fewer shadows as if half of the lights
See straight through. There is,
And simultaneously is not, the sound of an animal.
A pedestrian walks out of an apartment block,
Picks up the box without a word
And is gone back into his building.
Or someone's building.
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