Tree

Work still in progress. An experiment with interlocking reversed narrative character lives in the form of poetry.

Parts of this are somewhat cannibalised from the lit forum character writing exercises back in 2007. Acknowledgements especially to ~milksop ~root-kite !bewareofthesnowman.

Below is the transcript copy-pasted from word, which was in turn copy-pasted from note-pad, which has since been edited again, so it may differ somewhat from concrete version:




Life applies its suckers to the earth
and moves beneath like rain leeched
through sandy shale and silt to quench
its aching jaw, ploughs down a nail to
lever stones aside, and strive for dirt
from which to thrive, reaches with a
sneaky sprout for light, one glimpse
of sky will be enough to swell once
more, to harden out the starchy shoot,
to weather through the cut of frost
and suffocating splurge of snow before
the sludge of thaw, its thirst feeds
more and more, the ruthless snip of
herbivores set back the shoot's first
exploratory stem and kinks its base
to an offset yaw, and yet each wet
dawn nurtures, drives those clasping
claws deep deep into the soil, keeps
the heat of summer clenched within
its core, thrusts up a trembling post
whose flags ripple broken semaphore
each branch thrusts out against the
autumn's roar, it rocks and leans
and whips against the gale, and
shudders off the melting droplets
of the hail and twines around its
trunk the lives of others in its
wake, and stretches, cracks and
rips its arms in vain aplomb and
breathes and breathes and breathes
the upmost air, and feeds and feeds
and feeds its lusting store, the
weight of flesh is dragging at its
innards, straining down its lust
back to the forest floor, it strives
once more an agonising war to stave
off nature's law, before it falls and
drowns, a pustulating sore within its leaves.



Roger "Born-on-the-Road"
Willis built like a barrel
with a laugh from inside it
lumbers on the A5 with a truck
load of honey, bopping the wheel
with a molten hand to Don McLean
between downshifts, between hills
between towns between warehouses,
racing waves of telegraph wires to the
tachograph's click. Home before bank
holiday. A last
break from the
Thursday log-jam
beneath the awning of
Ken's Snax in the lay-by
beneath indigo storm clouds.
Thunder's gearshift shudder
portents the dim silverware of
rain, echoing knives thrown
slantways into the roadside.
Lorries kick up rainbows
in mudflaps, wash resting
truckers with pollution
heated wind. "A lorry
has shed its load of
guitar pedals on the
A418. Police expect long
delays." Eyes washed the
colour of tea, strained
through a million miles of
road-lines, glaze to the smash,
running in the rain,
hand pulling a frail pink wrist from its
new crematorium, and yanking
a dazed girl out of the afterlife
and into an ugly orphanhood:
knowing it was the wrong
choice, glazing back once
more to a youth of snooker
jokes, and the insincere croak
of the smoker’s choke, hacking
JPS smoke from the wrong
end of the lung, first toke
behind Spar, its zippo-warm
elation, a paradise forgotten
dream of rockets and button
moons, of skeptical yaffles
with mice making chocolate
biscuits from breadcrumbs
and butter-beans, a whole
childhood crawling on leathery
forests of clover, chasing
dandelion seeds into a forest
of enormous cat-plants.






Gillian Royce has just
retired, transport manager
with fifty-two truckers under
her thumb, she bullies
each one, concocts confusing
routes for fun, has them
racing waves of telegraph wires to the
tachograph's click. Home before bank
holiday? I don't think so.
A throwback to the days of
home her husband owning
every ounce of love she
fostered slaving barefoot
by the stove in hatred of
the male run world: how
she'll turn it upside-down!






Sarah Bailey jumps from the bridge
hits the water face down and lives
the unloved decade of pointed
gawps, a stubborn hibernation in
a scarf of discontent, the morphine’s
fading love, the morphine’s fading
love , the morphine’s fading love
the itch of blood sumping beneath
plastic scars, the surgeon’s clumsy
patchwork bodge, the buttocky ache
of hospital mattresses and waking
from a haze of flashbacks clamoring
in a grill of hell waving a fist
through the window and some rough
hand pulling a frail pink wrist from its
new crematorium, and yanking
a dazed girl out of the afterlife
and into an ugly orphanhood:
the smell of rain.
She wished she’d died until that
thought of being left comes in
a flashback with skidding doom as
daddy disappears in a crush of car
seat, shaking her out of the funk
of gymkhana aspirations dashed
by one hesitant mare’s crash through
a showjumping fence, at being made
to wait in the cold at the gates
after netball practice in a pleated
skirt and bare legs for a late lift,
racing to beat the biting tease
of belittled charm, inferred
obesity assumed stupidity
from timid tests. Sitting
silently sullen, sometimes
sulking sometimes serene
seeing the woman in the
tent on the pier
sat star struck in awe
'Your life will be long
your husband be strong
your face will be pretty
your body be light.' Her skip
belied the loser's
weight, the invisible
millstone of the unlucky
draped around her neck,
hooked over her stoop
by a flashback she
can't even feel.





Dirty Davey is overweight
pimples vomit lava on his
face, waxes his legs wears
feminine shorts, and hooded
tops on long winter nights
walks the town as a girl
hoping to beat up the rapists.
He's cultured, in the evenings
cooks bad curry on his own,
keeps stains the colour of
flashlights on his jeans,
turmeric on denim, and
uses six sheets of paper
to wipe his arse. Dirty
trawls the net
as Jade McCutey, twenty-two
from Tunbridge, her pictures
picked from pornstar
pretties, for men to tease
from behind the polished
mask of girl, learning from
them how to pull, a knack
nearly mastered. The female
species flies untamed, their
mocking words are tweeting
birds, tantalizing dreams
of proven manhood. Each
noisy, solitary pub, each
bitter pint nursed, each
conversation overheard –
a rubbed-in nose. Stolen
kisses in front of his glare,
the graze of fingernails
on silk frustrate him more
and more, because the
girl he tried to take had
run away, the girl he tried
to kiss had foiled his move,
the girl he tried to woo had
blanked his jokes, the girl
he tried to befriend had
moved away, the girl
he knew from work had
got him fired. Remember
the diamond dagger point
of sharpened knees protecting
the inaccessible flower of inner
thigh. The sight of that sexy
young girl compelled
to wait in the cold at the gates
after netball practice in a pleated
skirt and bare legs for a late lift,
taunts him from his teens
of ridicule, pinned and
humped by stronger girls,
punched and harassed
from school to school,
a haze of being the weirdo.
Don’t listen to him, his
father's a scrounger, unemployed
and Davey's just a
harmless husk of
a human.








Rainford Ngetani regards
himself fortunate to find
an English Rose so soon,
the girl he knows
as Jade McCutey, twenty-two
from Tunbridge, her pictures
printed, plastered
on the bedsit wall, her
features dreamed between
the endless rounds of cleaning
hospital corridors, the woeful
drone of spinning floor polishers
bouncing from skirting board to
wet floor sign and back without
a word. ‘How blessed I am
to find a job like this in
England. Six pounds an
hour, praise be to merciful
God,’ who oversaw the flight,
the fate the fear of a thousand
hitched lifts from Lagos to
Leeds, living rough in a car
off Old Ojo Road, printing
T-shirts for food, and hiding
from impunitive security raids,
the baton’s clout, the rifle-butt
sway. Running, running away from
home, the too strong too white,
familial walls of a well-to-do
crony, his nine children,
three wives and twelve
servants, couped on
slave wages, allowed
out in July to harvest
cassava and yams.
Remembers the year
of the bees, seeing
his brother fall into
the haze that covered
his too naked arms swollen
like lemons remember
the lorries that
crashed into the
carnival the day we
returned from London
never come back to England,
son, 'Go home to Mubutuland,'
they'd jeered before the
first punch, they'll never
forget the day the blacks
fought back, scarred that face
an ancient sign from cheekbone
to schoolyard days
stooped slashing the
lawn for detention, whose
muscles remain, taught and
angry at the tyrant of his father.






Kate Wilkins tires of
her girlfriend's closeted
lies, finds some straight
pub and some straight
guy, gropes her,
kisses in front of his glare,
the graze of fingernails
on silk frustrate him more
than her, thank God
those army days are done,
sweating under skeptical
glares being held in some
home, the too strong too white,
familial walls of a well-to-do
terrorist, before
the white knight shame
of rescue. Peacekeeping sucks.
In her other life a wayward
artist she'd rather fill a room
with playdoh, full beam
blue, and dive therein,
or draw a dozen dirty
diagrams of toilets down
to the last splatter of man,
would rather paint the face
of Virgin Mary folded in a scrotum,
or a cyst unpicked, the arsehole
of a cat, the juice of wasp
on windscreen, or a mouldy
mushroom, flodged into a
tree-stump than a pretty
landscape, or a portrait
of some vain old bastard.
Beats working for a living
and the manager's leer,
fired, the furius stare
as she was escorted away,
for rejecting
his gropes, she
couldn't care less,
she cries, to Caroline
the girly girl she keeps
and loves to tease
would wrestle her down with one hand
and kiss like a gun, bang bang,
flipped down too
easy, limbs like
cigarettes, smoking
hot, fatal, makes her feel
like the Thundercat
Cheetara, vaulting
over a canyon,
damn, she
loved that
show.







Roland Foster, English
and proud, rapes his
duvet two times a night
plays poker on the web for real
money but keeps getting flushed
those damn bad beats, fists
flat chords on his guitar
with nicotine stained knuckles
and barrenly murmurs lyrics
about decadence with girls
he's never kissed he always
smells of spoiling fish, combs
his hair in a right-sided
parting, shaves his beard
except for a small moustache
then goes out drinking alone
in London, or watches the
football and shouts at the
ref like he's some sort of
criminal, cries out 'hand-ball',
and watches women lose at sport
on youtube, so he can watch
them cry. Would rather eat
a marmite visage
of Virgin Mary folded in a scrotum,
or a cyst unpicked, the arsehole
pickings of bed,
than fruit. 'Immigrants!
That's what's wrong with this
country! Bring back national
service, the cane, the death
penalty. Shoot all them criminal
scum.' Roland can't
forget the day the blacks
fought back, scarred that face
a ancient sign from cheekbone
to jaw, 'One for
the country,' he says
to his mates, stolidly
fingering the long white
rut, remembering his daddy
dying in the Falklands,
the crying of his mother
beating up the Jewish-
looking girl, throwing
her down into a bank
of nettles. Being
woken one morning by
a pair of pliers clamped
on his nipple, being held
under the cold tap until he
choked, at least he knew
Britain is Best, that history's
written by the righteous, power
over peace, might
is right. His father
taught him that much
at least.









Simon Oaks played for 'Quins,
best remembered for that scuffed
kick in the last final, it cost
the game, wide right, 'grazed
the post,' they said on the radio,
‘What a miss!' Treasures that
moment before, composed, having
practiced those dabs in millions,
heft, heft, heft, the oval
egg flies over each time, in mere
formality of watching the end
over end over end tragectory
flip through Middlesex
air space. Practice -
against the grate of stamped
on knees, against the gritty
frost of dawn, against the
ache of healing bones crunched
shut in a prop forward's clutch
to catch the man who catches
the ball after the maul comes
down. Against the years of
school-field splodge, the
hollow whistle and
tinny cheers, the
joy of catching slower
and ploughing them into puddles
like ragdolls, revenge for
the caustic contempt at
not knowing about pi or
the equator or what was
seven times eight. Hating
the thought of being measured
in the brain, compared with
boys half his bulk, belittled
and unliked, because the
teachers tell them
in as many words
he's not worth shit.





Caroline Trevathen
is too thin and loves
it, loves encircling her
upper arm with her hand
loves seeing her long shadow
following her home, loves
losing arm wrestles with
children loves eating four
a day, apple, mango, avocado,
orange, hates odd numbers,
hates wasting time and
loves walking in the snowy
garden barefoot from doorway
to bird-table, longs for the
grip of her lover, smoking
in his bed, making love like
badly stacking chairs -
he'll hold her wrist as
a fuse, play her arm like
a violin, until she falls
falls falls in love. Chad
thinks she's too skinny
but he doesn't understand
what it means to be carried
or pinned and enjoy the
submission, doesn't have
the fire of Kate who
would wrestle her down with one hand
and kiss like a gun, bang bang,
twisting her a home
spun heat that beats
it's path from lungs
to heart last felt before
her orphanhood to God,
with her father she was
a team, especially for him -
Amen. Amen, my mystical child,
his carpenter's hands strong
but reserved, great for tickling
flat tummies, a laugh like
ribena bubbling
in her throat.




Mysterious Madame de Bouchard
lives in a shack at the end
of the pier, tells fortunes
and fishes for crabs
through a hole in the floor,
stares through the ball until
she sees stories, her eyes
tearing redly, she sees
lives written in palms
teased with fingernails
until hypnosis kicks in, like
the dumb little girl
sat star struck in awe
'Your life will be long
your husband be strong
your face will be pretty
your body be light.' Her skip
triggers memories of
dancing in London, the
noise of the crowd of the
show, the straining of knees
the staring of perverts the
stretching of hamstrings,
the turning of ankles, the angles
when the costume revealed the
impossible neatness of muscle
and skin. The sadistic instructor
her critical rasp at a step out
of place or a jump understated
until the inevitable breakdown,
denying dreams dancing daily
running down tree-lined avenues
and curtseying to the cheer
of the birds in the canopy,
in the background overhearing
the voice of her father,
‘You push her too hard.'





Chad Brookes played for all
the best London bands you've
never heard, smokes more
weed than tobacco, and bangs
his head against lyricists
to create sparks, a caveman
banging rocks, to burn holes
in their words. He's built like
bamboo, likes his bones when
they're burrowing caves
in his bed, making love like
badly stacking chairs -
he'll hold her wrist as
a fuse, play her arm like
a violin, until she falls
falls falls in love. Chad
once set fire to his guitar
on stage, burned down the set,
once made love to three girls
then vomited so hard his balls
hurt worse than the time
he played rugby and some
bully who harboured a sinister
joy of catching slower boys
and ploughing them into puddles
collared him just
before the try, turned
their sliding forms around and
he straddled the goal post
in an eye watering enjambment,
pain that travels through
guts like falling timber,
more pain than any lyrics
he mumbled while practising
his guitar, ad infinitum
in escape from his
parents' divorce.






It breaks Ted Bamford's
heart to hear them say:
Don’t listen to him, his
father's a scrounger, unemployed
on the lengthening
dole queue for the
last ten years since
the pit closed down.
Ted was a scab, worked
through the strike ten
hours a night hewing
coal from the tightest
of corners, 'the mole'
they would call him, for
his underground foresight,
his knack for cutting
stone like earth, he'd
spit black dust into the
damp slag piles that hover
like clouds, over the town
and wash the coke away with
salty bitter, or the hardest
whisky, the honeyed tumbler
trembles in his hands as it
rises to his ashen lips
the elbows tremor from
the aftershocks of quakes
from the hatchet's split
of stone the lungs heave
smoke from the fag between
the coal choked coils of
throat. He only sees the
sun when he leaves the town,
it’s buried too low in the
valley to see it except
on the solstice at noon.
Ted still remembers
the honeymoon in
Harrogate, and losing
his cherry six months
after, it was rumoured
he took after his father
but didn't know what it meant.





Bhupinda Rishta makes lime
chutney in buckets in her
kitchen, pickling chilli,
ginger and garlic into
sharp mulch, and selling
it to restaurants for ten
pounds a time. She rents
a maisonette the size of
a wardrobe, and is a multi
millionairess. The other
week, a clapped out Ford
Fiesta full of poor white
boys pulled up and jeered
'Paki' before speeding away
like a dumb, stung
animal. She laughed all
the way home, far cry from
the hunted faces of the
girls in the safe house
the escape from
the forced mismatch
of marriage to Ajeet
cooking lentil dal with
her mother and repeating
the mantra to Lakshmi -
Aum Shring Hring Kleeng
Mahalakshmi Namah.
Peace and harmony.



Nursing Auxiliary
Julie Fisher once attended
a man whose final
hour was on his deathbed, in
morphine hugged paradise repenting
while she read
about debauchery of polo
players, and when she finsihed
he was dead. She wipes
five bums an hour
commodes like they were
full of champagne, washes
feet and balls with the same
sponge, and force feeds the
dying until they aren't
alive, and wraps their
greying shells in plastic
sheets for the hooded
trolley's groan, that
reminds Julie of the
girls from the bus
crash, thrown into
melee by impacting a
wall, flat tyre from a
nail in the road, point up
through a sun-baked cow pat
their stoved-in noses
haunt her dreams more
than the nursing home
baffers rotting out
their own slow
Holocaust, one
in an electric recliner like
a death row inmate in a Dale-care
encampment, haunt
her more than
the hunted faces of the
girls in the safe house
and her first job
counselling the
war wounds of
bad marriage, it didn't
bode well that
her father had
given her hand
to a gangster
to cover his debts
she barely escaped
will never forget
the dismissive slaps
of her tits, and
the glaze in his
stare of a psycho
too high on his
power, like
the teacher
who asked her chosen career,
'A nurse,' she replied,
and felt lame for
the rest of her
life, from the
look she received.






Bill Vehley died by fork
lightning spearing his
roof while he showered
zap zap zapping him down
through the faucet. His
face covered the plug hole
and flooded the tenement
overlooking the sea that
he loved, the sea that
speaks to him in sighs,
tells him where the fish
live so he could steer his
trawler to net a tonne or
ten. He wished he'd joined
the navy instead of following
his schoolmate through
Worthy Down, Catterick, Blandford
Berlin, Suez, Longmoor a march
away from the ocean
that whispers its
greeting in waves
shows the faces of
men lost in its maw
and the voices of
people on the
opposite shore




Christina Goodly, fancies
herself as the new Robin
Hood, teaches kids to
aspire, become rich and
retire, lives the stone
walls of her school from
lessons on how to make
more of yourself, she
was always the one
who asked her chosen career,
'A nurse,' she replied,
'But why not
a doctor? If
only you could
look further inside
she might find the
means to be great
like the boy she
once asked who
stupidly claimed
what he wanted to be...
a racing driver.
And look where
he is now. She
remembers chastising
that silly young boy
who spoke only when
spoken to, wrote poems,
fed sparrows with crisp shreds
'Get organised! Wake up,'
if only more
people could be
together like her.





Bobby Holland grins through
pointed Penelopes about
what he saw last
week, a clapped out Ford
Fiesta full of poor white
boys pulled up and jeered
'Paki' before speeding away
into the distance, just
like the good old days,
collecting bread for
the boss, in brown
paper bags, the
shop keepers loved
him enough, that
of them offered
bad marriage, it didn't
work out her
heart wasn't in
it, she'd pled,
too bad, Trouble
he'd said at first
but shrugged her
off later as a loss:
plenty more Lillians
in the sea, so they
say. Bobby remembers
being look-out, the
best, his nose could
pick up the scent of
the roz from four
hundred yards.
For years they
were loaded with
dough, hanging out
in the pitlane,
'You should be our getaway driver,'
they teased, he really wasn't in
that class, more
the sort they'd
extort a grand a
month from given half
a chance like the fool
they hit for half his pay
before he moved from London,
used that coin
to buy a tart
for half a day
the best hours
of his life.






Charlie 'Whizzo'
Freestone moulders
in an electric recliner like
a death row inmate in a Dalecare
home for the ancient
but still, sees racing
lines from his wheelchair
around the corners of
corridors that resemble
Monaco or Spa in their
hay bale heyday. Charlie
was never the same
after the shunt at Monza,
he still has the steering
wheel on his wall, bent at
its apex by the bridge of
his nose, can still recall
running last at Rouen, pulling
over to tug Jo from his
wreck, not before the
magnesium body fried him,
still sees the body of
Chris, dead, being dragged
off the road as he sped on
to seventh. He holds the
wheel at quarter to three,
jousts with Fangio, Moss,
von Trips et al. The smell
of petrol in the pitlane
the laugh of the London
crowd he used to know,
'You should be our getaway driver,'
they teased, he really wasn't in
their crowd, thank
Christ. He remembers
the look on the teacher's
face when she asked
what he wanted to be...
a racing driver.
He wonders what
she thinks now
every mile driven
a special 'fuck
you,' rammed
down her throat.





Peter Handry prays,
smouldering with
virtuosity, for
forgiveness at not
having chastised that
crow on the lamp post
that preached to its
featherbed congregation
the meter of Proverbs
26:27, in a tongue of
feversome barks and caws.
Prays not for sneering at
the homeless man, the pregnant
divorcee, the boy with HIV,
prays not for cheating
the builder who made his porch
from his payment, prays not
for parking his car on the
corner of a fast country road
waiting for a whiplash claim,
prays not for the boy without
a seatbelt or a face, prays not
for the lesbian he had
fired, the furious stare
as she was escorted away,
prays not for disowning
his daughter, prays only for
the time he missed church on.
Sunday to care for his dying
father. Peter once saw the
eye of God, gazing from
a canopy, blessing his blood,
the sun feeding his vitamin
starved body with high,
glory, glory, glory, light
and mushrooms, sky-fish
sucking the flesh from
fruit, leaves stroking
the air, the world as
a team, especially for him -
Amen. Amen, my mystical child,
his carpenter's hands strong
but reserved, great for tickling
flat tummies, a laugh like
a file or a
plane grafting
wood, hoarse and
delighted containing
the grief of a lost
wife within, harking
back to the days of
those practical jokes
like the mountain of
duvets in the school
assembly hall or the
nail in the road, point up
through a sun-baked cow pat
and best, abducting
a sculpted Crystal
Palace dinosaur, releasing
it to sink in the mire of
a reservoir, and won't
ever forget the jokes in morse
code, flashed to the house
of the idiot.
He can't help
wondering where
they all are now.






Sergeant-Major Bennett's finest
hour was on his deathbed, in
morphine hugged paradise repenting
zenophobia fostered
in the war, regretting those
dumb kids he caned for not
knowing Britain's trouncing
of the Hun, that
Britain is Best, that history's
written by the righteous, power
prevails. They'd recite
double-time the names of
Kings dates of battles and how
the tribes were tamed. Bennett
boasts a straight-lined walk,
a Roman Road across that dewy
school field, mowing down the
the straggled swaggers of
lazy minded boys, a march
perfected in Aldershot,
Worthy Down, Catterick, Blandford
Berlin, Suez, Longmoor a march
aspired to hiding under
the kitchen table as the
V bombs flew over, in
his mother's limp arms.










Eccentric Edgar Carnegie sees
shapes in the sky, faces
in the sea, landscapes
in patterns of dust
on the sill, won't
ever forget the jokes in morse
code, flashed to the house
by the Martians - there's
no denying, Edgar sees all.
Lo, in the night, bands of tiny
men steal into his lounge to
rearrange his furniture
into elven letters for him
to decipher. The slugs write
love letters to snails in
cursive script on his garden
walls, eat maps on his cabbages
for the unchartered lands
they retreat to in the heat.
When he blinks he sees lines
on the sky that no one else
sees, dots signify daylight
constellations of stars, the
sun shines blue-green when
he stares through his eyelids
the colour of tropical water.
His last turd was the shape
of Luxembourg, the bubbles
in the wash basin showed
the face of Madonna, when
it's night the lights sing
to him from their fuses
and he meows in his sleep
to the cats in his dreams
who were actually government
spies but turned to his side.
Edgar listens to what the wind
screams when it's stabbed in
the side by the corners of
architecture, smells its
salty blood, like a
gangster, remembers how
they hit for half his pay
before he moved from London,
whose road map he
saw in cobwebs in the
home of his grandmother
where he rearranged books
in their order of colour
fed sparrows with crisp shreds
'Get organised! Wake up,'
they'd screamed in his ear
at the school with the
patterns on the
playground.