Neil Fulwood - 2

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The Black Marble

​“The world in darkness, lit up” is how the news-reader
puts it – tin-eared teleprompter prose.
Point taken, though. The images released by NASA
are pure spectacle: the planet as onyx globe
 
pin-pricked with gold. Pin-pricked in some places;
in other places, great patches of it –
cities under their cowl of lights, seen from space.
The news-reader lists the benefits
 
of technology that can identify a single streetlight
or a boat in the darkness, illegally fishing.
Imagine: a dizzying, whirling Hollywood money shot,
a billion dollars of NASA tech zooming in –
 
two guys, some beer, a boat that’s half the bank’s;
patrol car at the harbour. Nice one, NASA. Thanks. 
​

The Expletive Deleted of
​the Average Briton
 "The average Briton swears fourteen times a day" --The Metro

The first as your fist deals with the alarm -
make that two if you wake with a hangover.
The stubbed toe or the elbow impacting
on the dado rail's chamfered corner -
that'll be the second or third, depending.

Spilled coffee? Minor oath. Dropped toast
executing that mid-air flip to ensure
its buttery side smears the kitchen floor? Oath
in a major key. The gridlock and frayed nerves
of the drive to work? Horn Concerto in F.

The office threatens a grand symphony,
a Mahlerian parade of missed promotions
and belligerent bosses, rendered
in the arpeggios of Anglo-Saxon, four letters
to the word as surely as beats to the bar;

but you hold back. You’re in the arena
of best behaviour, the all-hearing ear
of the conference call attuned to even
the softest imprecation. Thought-profanity
replaces the verbal, Orwell in Dilbert’s cubicle.

Does it count as one of your fourteen
if it’s imagined – a word bubbling
into being in the mind’s alphabet soup,
the four syllables of what you think of your boss
achieving their Oedipal rendezvous?

Thriller

Stupid o’clock, the last few chapters
paced out like countdown markers,
the denouement on the horizon
and the smudgy pink-grey of dawn
not far behind it. Common sense
shook its head an hour ago,
like a literary critic dismayed at your choice
of potboiler, or your boss foreseeing
your yawn-stifling showing
at tomorrow’s presentation. Tomorrow?
Try later today. You shrug – or would
if you weren’t pre-occupied with page-turning.
This car chase is what’s important.
The revelation is one burning automobile
and a shoot-out away. There’s some business
about a girl and a suitcase crammed
with non-sequential notes,
but that’s strictly epilogue stuff.
The mano-a-mano shenanigans
is what counts – that, and the big reveal.
Has it been a game of bluff and double bluff
or double cross and triple cross?
It all depends on who staggers out
of that burning wreck, pistol in hand.
You think you know: it’s either
the high-flying corporate lawyer
or his brother, MIA since Desert Storm,
back from the burning sands
and coveting the trappings of another man’s life.
But you’re wrong. The villain
is closer to home and legion: it’s the alarm
in four hours’ time, the six cups of coffee
before the meeting, the tombstone eyes
of the unimpressed clients, the face-palming
that greets you back in the office,
the way the phone stays sullenly silent
like the antagonist in the last chapter
keeping shtum in the interview room.
​

Trail

​Keep to the path. You will know
the path by its coating of moss
and wet leaves. It will try

to unfoot you. Three kilometres
of bad camber and changes
in gradient: it has unfair

advantage. No campfires
or ball games. But you will know
the picnickers by their safe proximity

to the car park. Their flasks,
their point-and-shoot snaps
of the lake. No drinking of the water;

no dog fouling. But you will know
the enthusiasm of the dog
unleashed, its happiness at the path

and the acreages of things to sniff.
You will know its muddy paws,
its tongue unfurled in welcome.

Swat the thick of the dirt
from your coat or trousers.
Stout footwear is recommended.


​                        ♢

Neil Fulwood's Profile
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Firth

Blue is the coldest colour, or
would be if blue had any urge
to storybook the scene.
 
The firth is a choppy tonnage
of slate-grey, drilling platforms
a mile-long join-the-dots pattern
 
from holiday cottage to North Sea,
the rising land on the far side
shaded to drab by cloudbanks.
 
Night is sudden: stage curtains
take their time by comparison.
Colour is reduced to the lights
 
on the ships and the rigs,
blipping out some ‘When Eight
Bells Toll’ code. Rain starts,
 
gathers insistence; hardens
to hail. The firth is black now,
the edge of the road indistinct. 
​

We Renew Our Vows in the
​Presence of the Auto-Wed Machine 

                 (The Camera Obscura & World of Illusions, Edinburgh.
​                  30 April 2017)

Exit through the gift shop, but not before
you’ve descended the staircase that resounds
with whatever tune your footfalls create,
or been waylaid by the wedding machine –
 
don’t mind us. We’ll only be a minute.
We’re renewing our vows in the presence
of said coin-slot operated gizmo
for the not-so-princely sum of one pound
 
and I wonder by whose authority
its powers are vested? The guy who made
the chess-playing Turk? Skegness’s Jolly
Fisherman, the chuckles under control
 
and a more dignified sense of purpose?
Robbie the Robot, redundant, heartsore
for Anne Francis and quietly stacking
the scales, one tourist couple at a time,
 
against the loneliness of tin, glass, lights?
​

Tree Surgeon

The tree GP attended first; pressed
his cold stethoscope to the bark,
listened, wasn’t sure. Sap was sent
to histology; came back inconclusive.
 
The tree consultant requested
a twig biopsy; had more sap work done;
reviewed a diagnostic imaging report.
Spoke quietly as he broke the news.
 
The tree nurse ticked the checklist
box by box, the benefits and risks
laid out dead straight. A fallen leaf
was taken for consent. And now
 
the tree surgeon’s ready to operate –
he’s wearing boots and denim shirt
instead of suit, a lunch tin
where black bag should be the norm.
 
No sterilised implements. A grubby
pull cord yanked, the stink of smoke
and petrol in the air. Visor snapped
in place and noise to wake the dead.
​

Kaiju

Godzilla in pain,
wracked with toothache from chewing
buildings, bridges, cars.
 
Incisors shattered
by lumps of brick and concrete,
molars set on edge
 
as metal screeches
against enamel. Gums bleed.
Dumpsters fur his tongue.
 
The ocean was clean.
The city’s anything but.
Godzilla retches.
​

Depot

It hangs there, on a sign
lettered in the Seventies,
a word with a fag in its mouth:

depot. A word redolent
of oily patches on broken concrete
and a row of lorries

parked against a clapboard structure.
Tea from a flask, the last
cold dregs flicked out.

Box files on a makeshift shelf
in an office that'd be happier
as a workshop. Punch clock

and girlie calendar, walls
painted in whatever stores had over.
Some vital support service

ticking away in the background.
​

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