Tread a frail path ghostly.

Confounded Remembrances.

 

Pick at the single string to create a strident hum setting the edge to teeth and tear to eye. Paste a chemical smell over this; stinking killing disinfectants sucking life and colour out of desperation.. Fluid and base solid compete with the flow, damning the light and retching rainbow sludge over displaced industrial waste.

Children sit in slapping boot and threadbare legs, large knitted, repaired, sown and hand me down. Wipe nose in blood from fighting and snot from crying despair.

Corrugated and gun grey, back street. Thin alley ginnel pooling urine yellow light from steaming red brick surrounded machines. Sprays of black water, sucked sudden with burnt dust from various hells.

Mechanical idiot idols standing giant ribbed and rusted guard. Spray legged positioned over holes to nowhere and nothing. Gusts of halitosis devilry emerging into belching wet lung air. Steam dirt and fear. Light less and postwar grey.

Men emerge from tired black cages. Black in their own parts, old blood black, as tired as the seventh hell they come from. Sons and sons, dying slowly, in blank poor lit blackness. Turning to the end of shift light. Coming back to thankful brief surface life and a forgetting for a while. Deep vein sweat congealed on contact with steamy driven air. Children watching the despondent future and what it holds.

Completely nude men, wearing white skin underwear wash themselves in gun grey cold iron baths. Kitchen tiled fires drying the muck from tattooed Mother arms and scarred white pale once rickets legs along with this weeks washing scrubbed in the used bath water.

Thin wife women called to the holy stained glass saviour saints on Sabbaths. The nearer my Eros to thee, watching the calm, always white faces of angels in glass and marble. The precious seat nearest to the big marble, erected to the memory of this Alderman by his ever loving family. Sileo in Eternus pacis. Known for his good works for the grateful people of this parish. The day thou gavest Lord has been one day nearer the death, thankfully. Come down from the mountain and wish for a rest in peace stone in the start of industry's revolution valley.

Once were wonders. Once was light. Lights were clear and sounds could be heard. When laughing made that suited none but all. Was this the golden time of living loving? When God was near and could be heard in the dreams of falling waters. Was there wonder in a simple death? Was it felt by all, after a beauty lit in a misty fecundity? When your sons and daughters. Was this your Albion? Was it then your green and pleasant land? Was all that was good builded here? Before...

Reviews

[Donald Meikle]

To hear the choirs compete in Sunday morning valley mist
To sit and look to Snowden in the hills the gods have kissed
Beside a fenced in shaft of light that sinks into a hole
That's filled with dust where those who must
Give up their days for coal.
Well written Ken to show us men
Who sacrifice their soul

[...]

. there are a million thoughts spinning in my head after reading your poignant and thought-provoking words ... and they're not just about the industrial revolution and its effects ... they are about people ... people who have seen what has happened to people ... people who have witnessed degeneration and feel it like a splinter in their heart ... waiting and wishing for the degeneration to end and the re-building to begin ... maybe it will happen ... now that your words have been released into the universe ...

[SM Davis]

Je vous dirais comment vraiment ph�nom�nal c'est, pourtant, je croirais que je devrais r�pliquer � votre riposte avec... Je crois que vous protestez vraiment trop...

� laquelle je devrais r�pondre de nouveau ...

conneries!! Vous �tes l'enseignant de ... enseign� encore aussi ... l'�tudiant qui n'en manque rien que nous appelons la vie. Bien fait!

[R J Askew]

When men were men and knew it.

Great to see the word ginnel deployed. I was at some poncy southern poetry event when some naff git went on and on about the word 'SLUTCHY' like he'd discovered a Martian. Ever fibre in me wanted to chin him.

Love the first graph. I smiled and thought, 'that's me trying to write poetry...with a JCB.'

[W.k.kortas]

As Emma notes, this is a wonderful look at the life of the men who go down into the pit, and how the trappings of the mine and the mining town take on a life of their own--they piss, belch, and wretch--while the men turn as black as the coal they take from the ground; it is interesting to note that there are no names, no individuals here, just men and women who are every bit as mechanical as the machinery they work with and for. The brevity of the piece belies its insight and weight.

[Jibey]

A powerful and graphic description of the dehumanising impact of the industrial revolution and the hypocrisy of a world that sings praises to itself..

[Emily B]

the things that confound must surely be written, painted, sang, shared

there are so many confounding moments in this life, lessons to be noted and learned, and shared . . . thank you for drawing them so truly

[Phibby Venable]

You are a master at expressing all the emotions, especially despair.
I love the entire piece..and this
>>Completely nude men, wearing white skin underwear wash themselves in gun grey cold iron baths.
your descriptions are always exceptionable and can be Seen. Just really excellent work!

[emmajoy]

What an incredible piece of writing - the life of men down the pit, the hell of their work, the pictures of the children and their mothers .. all wrapped in your extraordinary phrasing and depth of words: 'Sprays of black water, sucked sudden with burnt dust from various hells.' ... 'When God was near and could be heard in the dreams of falling waters. Was there wonder in a simple death? '

You produce a near tragic series of pictures yet, truth of past and present.

[nostal]

dEPRESSINGLY GOOD.