Invisible ladies,
sawn in half in
Memphis, Tennessee,

death on a toilet,
the boot. Affordable
cladding. Hax Pax

Max Deus. Blue
suede shoes in
faux. Pleather ankle

adornment: Rhinestones.

Outside GAME

I see a silver balloon, riding

high. I ❤ you Andi

it says, I ❤ you

but

Andi has let it go, slipped

it away, lighter than air. 

It bobs and pecks

at the ceiling. Too soon,

a fugitive heart 

in the cold-handed breeze,

ever so slightly

deflated. 

Underneath the shopping mall, a park

I use to play there in the 50s does anyone remember the big slide loved it no health and
safety then just us kids having fun. Wasn't there a 'witches hat's there? A witches hat roundabout.

All those homes facing onto Selborne Rd, there would have been a community on that road. Shameful changes in the name of shopping centre and motor car. Failure.

Two people, even kids, trying to both get dried and dressed in the coffin sized cubicles.

Used to play football there in the 60s. You can see the bare patch of grass to left of picture where the goal mouth was. 

My Mum met my Dad at the dance school Sonny Deardon's.

Crap building with dead frontage, just like the side of BHS opposite. Dead frontage.







Original pictures & more info here

Neon

We're in love with the modern

world, Lighter than air,

primordial, solar-

orange. First arcade then

wasteland, where kids circle,

kids circle tubes

&. Modern- the

modern world. Come

Empire and chicken,

pools on the pound shop

roof, of light. Of purified gas,

a bright disco of

inert mouths. Noble

outed in the aftermath of

a missing church, broken

noses. An ache of shoppers

with craning necks, the rain,

in love, the world.

Infinite spark, birthing balls,

cries in fluorescence,

the gas/air of labour,

the pain of care, of un.

Geezers hold tight in their hearts,

a mother grasps onto a

moment- hair collapsing

upon her naked back.

In lust, in wilderness,

fragile as the skull of a bird,

dreaming only of England,

of love- her electric arc.

awright cockerney sparro
allo guvnor, cheers mate. today we
are in landan tan, with the pearly kingz
and queens it's

a reet owd pea souper if ize do say soze 
meself. jolly good says i, time to go dan
the warfamsto mall and rite me a little pome
in an arwful 

faux landan parlay! on me way i only
saws a photo boof, two pand a pop
wiv loads of fancy backgrandz, looks
like a reet old larf i sayz.

in i go and does up me barnet, tries
to mek meself presentable but not
being funny, me boat race looks 
all seventies- 

like i'm off TOTP2 or summink.
wot a palava! Nearly wet me pants
wiv the fort. The clicker went orf
three time before i'd

even put my lippy on! anyways, wish you 
was ere me old pal, nice day forrit, pomes
and talking borlocks and all that-
seeya next time treacle,

i'm orf to ave a luvverly cappa tea. 

Various winter sunsets
over the large pink M

Arctic in flashes of blue-
orange, impossible 

The bitter faced yawn
of a January wind 

Shoppers entombed
in wool, optimism

Dreams of lido, August,
limbs- 

free in the air like spit.

As Odysseus approaches his home, he finds Argos lying neglected on a pile of cow manure, infested with lice, old and very tired. This is a sharp contrast to the dog Odysseus left behind; Argos used to be known for his speed and strength and his superior tracking skills. Unlike everyone else, Argos recognizes Odysseus at once and he has just enough strength to drop his ears and wag his tail but cannot get up to greet his master. Unable to greet his beloved dog, as this would betray who he really was, Odysseus passes by (but not without shedding a tear) and enters his hall. Argos dies.

On the big telly- TS Eliot / David Bowie / Rupert Murdoch.

To the determined
mum, breast-feeding 
against buses, fuzz
faced, lonesome 
in that way all new 
mothers are- 
I love you. Outside

A man cycles by with
no hands.

Thoughts as 
concrete, quiet 
full as milk. 
Your baby is a lump
of sugar, a ripped
corner from the 
entire universe.

People drink coffee
like nothing is happening.

You will go home
to an unmade bed, the hum
of the washing machine-
Rich Tea. Sometimes
you will feel as if you are
made from glass, your
tiny barnacle a hammer.

Seagulls, with bodies like bullets
wheel happily in grey skies.

Some days you 
stare at the changeling,
this thing from outer space-
the love in you hard and
fierce as the outside,
as difficult and 
wondrous and real. 

The main security threats to The Mall Selborne Walk 

and surrounding areas include everyday occurrences 

such as theft and criminal damage through to the 

more sensitive cases of lost children or threatening 

behaviour. Our investment in a new CCTV control room 

gives us the ability now to effectively protect staff and shoppers- 

nothing is your own except the few cubic centimetres inside 

your skull. Inside the control room are 4 JVC 17-inch high resolution 

LCD monitors, model LM-17G- mounted on Ergotron stands 

located at the operator's desk. These are used for monitoring 

alarms, CCTV camera images, shopping centre car park 

images and spot monitoring. Orthodoxy means not thinking.

For recording of video images, the system incorporates 

an Integral DigitalSentry digital recording system by 

Tour Andover Controls enabling any event to be located 

within 3 to 4 seconds. 6 JVC TM-A210G high resolution colour 

monitors are installed in a monitor wall at eye level for CCTV 

image monitoring... it is almost normal for people over thirty 
to be frightened of their own children.

Every mirror in British Heart 
has lived reflection after reflection- 
each owner flat-packed against the glass
like wet leaves pressed on rainy windows.

Those rooms they showed. How many
kisses and haircuts, a thousand pieces
of spinach, ten thousand teeth- a curious
girl smashes lipstick on her gob

in every silver puddle. Portals- first wed
to drop down dead. Who have you 
belonged to? Bob and Jean and Evelyn, 
every line observed, each smudge rubbed

with a page from the WF Guardian, 
grimy in hate and stabbings. Time for 
a new study, cheap as chips. Delivery
knocked down if you give them a smile.

Don't walk on the red squares- they are boiling hot LAVA and will melt your feet off. There was a fire. It took off the hood, then the trees died. History is fun too kids! A cadillac smashes through the wall like Truman's boat. Outside, the forest. Hands in the air, a whistle posse of Twiglets, jostles upward over Selborne. Spend time. Spend! Thatcher's red eye certain as a new day. Snob, Tammy, Spudulike: fallen kingdoms. Rumbelows.  A lone potato rolls across the empty mall.

Plant one unit of Magic 

Corn and see a golden stalk

Burst through the roof 

Into the magic slush of

January skies. Fun food:

A concept. Not sickness-

Magical Corn! Like fantasy.

From the rolling farmland

Of Malaysia, our corn ripens

In cat-stretch sunshine,

Crunchy fresh as a pocket

Of pop, big fat giant at the top-

Fee, Fi Fun! Food.

   

Midwinter, the dream is over.
Fleeting thoughts of becoming 
superfit- better. The shoppers
stutter on. A stream of elders, 
Mothers. Sleep.

WHAT DID YOU GET FOR CHRISTMAS?
What I always get.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS?
Keep on. And ask

QUESTIONS.

Walthamstow. All the faces,
this one like a smashy dumpling, 
a currant bun. There a fox-
sparrows on a pulsing line,
full of Adele's Hello-

each word a ghost. Pushchairs
rattle, big with bones. Milk
forms soft in the corners of mouths,
and the echo in Costa rounds out 
like ripples from a hard lobbed rock.

the eggs of a rare broken-toothed snipsnap-

each to their own. 

a pioneer struggles over the mountains of loose ground toward the guts of the beast.

money lies around in delicious piles of hi... inedible,

in every ovary, a thousand glints beam outward from a girl from essex-

you can say that again!

remember: no makeup is a nude look.

Hello. Welcome to the project! Predictably, I have left it very late as I went to bed at 4am last night, and my brain is made of scrambled eggs. Also, the Mall was closed today- which I should have anticipated. However, this evening I took a walk around the area just to make a start. I wrote an Instagram poem as I was taken by the magic and science fiction of the closed centre. I will be taking lots of pictures- you can follow me here if you like that kind of thing. I feel like explaining what I am up to, but I want the project to speak for itself so hope you can find your way. I will be at the Mall every weekday for a year (unless I go on holiday) so come and say hello if you like. I will post on Twitter where I am every day. Here is the first poem!

the first day. the mall sits closed and quiet as a ghost ship.

strange lights and shrubs vogue slow in the winter breeze. christmas: dead as a doornail

denied. the photobooths have had enough. in the gaps between gobstoppers: whispers.

cycle thieves, we are watching you,

i believe that children are the future,

the end of the east end. space stations form in tiny playgrounds. a dog clatters hard across the starboard.

a portal opens. on one side- articles, on the other... entire blackness,

the grass, soaked in the blood of last minute shoppers.

dr david macklin hangs frozen like an aghast god- forever watching us, fatherlike with his yorkshire man's eyes,

alien life: no laughing matter-

hiding, there in the tacked on trees.