#10 (hawkins)
We chew our fucking gums raw, high on nightshift CIA amphetamine, and punch co-ordinates, dial-up a drone raid. It’s air-con dry and four hours into Thursday. Chemtrail traces a lazy flight across morning’s lapis sky (burning charcoal, mint tea, a palm full of figs, flies and sand in the honey, a mother breast-feeding). Eyes closed in the shimmy-shimmer; a grey-blue-grey-white sky. Two hundred and seventy nine minutes of The Simpsons later, (blink white-silver-yellow-silver) all that’s left out there is half a dog.
#10 (neiva)
YOU CALL IT PROFESSIONAL FOOTING
I CALL IT DRIVEL-MAKING
YOU CALL IT MONEY FOR OLD ROPE
I CALL IT EMBELISHMENT
YOU CALL IT CONGLOMERATE
I CALL IT CAR PARK
YOU CALL IT OUTCRY
I CALL IT BALD PATCH
YOU CALL IT YOUTH TEAM
I CALL IT ACNE
YOU CALL IT BRAND
I CALL IT BOREDOM
YOU CALL IT MINDSET
I CALL IT SMART DRESSING
YOU CALL IT NATURAL TALENT
I CALL IT ACCIDENT
YOU CALL IT GLOBAL
I CALL IT BLOGAL
YOU CALL IT WORKSHOP
I CALL IT SHOP
YOU CALL IT URBAN PLANNING
I CALL IT PANTRY
YOU CALL IT UPBRINGING
I CALL IT REALPOLITIK
YOU CALL IT RIOT
I CALL IT TOUR
YOU CALL IT SPA
I CALL IT SPAM
#11 (hawkins)
Caught short in Dream Doors,
a noodle-speciality-cum-guarana bar,
she made an excuse for
her lacking liquidity;
something about her boyfriend’s
2CV obsession,
the politics
of cash vs plastic
(not being what it used to be)
and agreed with the intern
that damn right
black coffee in bed
was better than Chamomile tea.
In this humidity,
lardy breakfast sweat
soaked through
the armpits of her
Joan Jett t-shirt.
The jukebox played
I Can’t Stand The Rain
by Ann Peebles,
as she tried to recall
her PIN.
#11 (neiva)
a: over cuppa leafing through situations vacant
b: rolling eyes, hair dyeing tips, pipe dreaming
c: little we know let alone borrowed ideas at five quid each
a: the valves of the heart put under the microscope are but a
foil to the best choric scenes
b: as we speak, the canine affection to the martyrs along the
brick floor
c: one has not merely to pay for oneself but to yield a certain
profit
d: cinema’s equivocal position between art and industry accounts
for the relations between author and public
e: you see I once married the Oban girl I did
f: something is wrong with the silence but it often proves pointless
trying to assign precise meaning to details
g: he forgot his second pint of brown ale before he was sent on
his journey; I brusquely took it, left the field of operations and
made my way out
/ / / / / / / / / /
These poems are drawn from the book Servant Drone, out with Knives Forks and Spoons Press in November. Some of the poems in Servant Drone appear in different form in Place Waste Dissent (Influx Press).
/ / / / / / / / / /
Paul Hawkins is a Bristol based poet who has been a musician, squatter, tour manager, freelance journalist, gardener, improviser, collaborator and manager of an Elvis Presley impersonator. He studied the art of sleeping standing up and drinking lying down with nearly disastrous consequences; last count he’s moved on average every eleven months but only ever owned one tent.
He co-runs Hesterglock Press and has had two books published, Claremont Road and Contumacy (both erbacce-press), and you’ll find his work in Maintenant, International Times, Quincunx, The Morning Star, M58, Rising, Stride, The CUT UP! Anthology, as well as other magazines, sites, walls and ’zines.
bruno neiva is a Portuguese text artist and poet. Author of washing-up (zimZalla), averbaldraftsone&otherstories (Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and dough (erbacce-press), amongst other titles. Bruno’s ongoing projects include The museum of boughs, an itinerant museum dedicated to boughs, built on open-ended sets of intermedia installations, as well as Servant Drone, a collaborative poetry and performance project with English poet Paul Hawkins. You can find more of bruno’s work at http://brunoneiva.weebly.com/.