- 1 -

Dream

Blacker,

Faceless

Engineers !

Fionn Coughlan-Wills

- 2 -

By the same author:

Tumbleweed and a carrier bag…

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Contents

Stitch That - 3

Family Triptych - 6

Un love - 7

Pyramid Scheme - 8

Herd Mentality - 10

Spirit of the Staircase - 12

Holding you like I might a bottle of wine - 13

The Loveseat - 14

Valley - 15

Postcards of the Mentally Ill - 16

Coping Ugly - 18

Rolling Hulks - 19

In the Sun - 20

Voyager on the Heliopause - 22

The Spectacles - 24

Bright Side of a Black Hole - 25

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Stitch That

I’d had a go of it,

he’d hooked me up,

chucked me up,

threw me over for the

femme fatale type.

Had blown my brains out with

tedious conversations on the terabyte,

fed him tripe,

fed me tripe –

had no excuse to cancel the milk that night.

So when he showed up,

all apologetic corduroy

and humility turtleneck

to say we’d had a go of it – he’s sick of it.

I felt obliged to stick him with it – stitch that I’m thinking.

Milk bottle bust, landed on the floor

made the opposite of a chandelier,

took his dead-weight to the crypt of the car,

saw milk, and blood, and bile mix

become ambergris

- 5 -

I had done with him, popped those clogs

shod the funeral loafers and bin bag attire,

to drive the motorway and dump cargo -

body, clothes and baggage – into the river.

And as they say, Officer, I never looked back.

It might be this reason, that I failed to check

my blind spot, cut you up with the motor

– blues and twos - hesitated, then signalled to pull over.

- 6 -

Family Triptych

Up a gangplank

through the land

between house, home and road

three of a family tree trod,

one in front of the other

digits trellised

dovetailed together

a linked length

of pedigree.

First

Father, grandpa, clergyman drew

Mother, their grandmother, philanthropist

up. Denied purchase from spent years caring.

And steadying the give, behind

The daughter, granddaughter, the student.

Brogues, slippers and walking boots.

Tapping, gliding, clumping.

cosseting the altruist,

with age – under the weather,

weaker between the strength of the others

over scaffold bridge

bonded a chain-gang

of love

of life.

- 7 -

Un love

You eat munchies

When you greet me

The work you undertake:

are opinions

You fail to recognise

Your Laugh

I could forgive you

like a horse masticates on a carrot,

it is as hospitable as Zyklon B,

obsolete like male nipples,

to you unwanted as childhood memories,

the opening bars of ‘All you need is love’,

is a prerequisite to migraine.

But the boredom jars.

8

Pyramid Scheme

She took a bronze saw

nine feet long,

set with sapphire teeth

to business

carving life into

a Pyramid

of manageable

blocks.

Descending to the largest of jobs,

leading to glitches eventually

larger than life -

top down organising,

placing the smallest

in a pocket of time

five minutes from now. Now

the miniscule,

later the monument.

She began:

scratched her itch,

made a meal of it

left the dog the bones,

put things in order,

settled her affairs,

got the job done

shattered sugar-glass ceiling,

left him holding the baby,

almost one time met her maker.

Performed the remit of

9

Serial Note-Taker.

Scrawling every last hiccup into submission

Mason to the stones

around others’ necks

to build

Until

after a whole tome

Centenarian Charleston

beckoned home.

Hung up

the world-worn saw,

reflecting her hair, her eyes, the sapphires now the size of

amoeba fear,

Set a final gargantuan slab,

the foundation stone

for those to continue

by example. And

Pitched back on her heels

to see

.

10

Herd Mentality

Within the picture frame of a tea-caddy valley

an airborne lottery wheedled its way to the nostrils

of the sheep, selected the club night in the cow sheds

promising cuts of cut-rate sweet-meat.

Animals grazed as clan for millennia, hailed

by their thousands, into the news reels and word processors

of the Dictaphone media: no Nazi propaganda, no furnace in the street

the four-legs had reached their zenith and were a jewel in the peaks.

A party was thrown, from the depths of our hearts

onto the celebrating heap, warm animal bodies pirouetting together

in the bedlam of kaylee dancing cattle, heralded humans

in droves to douse the god-like livestock in champagne and altar fire.

Indeed fireworks: multi-shot aerial displays formed night into day,

Roman Candles set the bleating from black sheep shooting at the

youngest jumpers

the gunpowder smell of acrid pleasure, Catherine Wheels likely to

fix landscapes across the nation with a micronova of prescribed

carnival burn.

In their new-found importance, ablaze with screaming laughter,

aware that carnival antics are in ewes, rams, goats and bovine inborn.

Anything with cloven hoof apple-bobbed, splatted-the-rat, given a

prize:

A shout-out over tannoy, a double-barrelled loud-hailer, a lit sparkler.

11

Every moment de facto Shangri La, each species a nomadic caravan,

all congregations a vigil. Sung out in all crevices

The King of Love my Shepherd Is.

Epicentres of the crescendo were identified in

Essex, Northumberland, Cumbria and the North York Moors.

Weeks died – breeds cross-pollinated - until fetes, galas, events ceased.

Fires were extinguished; food was off, entertainment encored.

Perpetual motion machines, every animal body a top

another, on their backs, ashen, asleep.

A lottery spent.

It was later found that rather than announce Lent early

(commend critters to respite, quadrupedal Butlins and organised fun)

Tiring them out throwing a party now

would cost fleecy market pockets less in the long run.

Carnival abated. skies no longer alight. Bleating eulogy silence.

For months after aside dry stone walls before entering

the hallowed grounds of the sacred feasts

our sign of respect was marked by a blessing:

to wash our hands with buckets of water and disinfect our feet.

12

Spirit of the Staircase

That night we smoked cigars and broke onto the roof of a

seaside diner

just for a better centre of the sky,

the night when someone became half-cut under inspiration,

ran screaming headlong into the canopy night,

a life ring around his head, an illicit halo keeping him buoyant

through the air,

how we gave chase, regained a friend,

wasted no time inundating arcade high-scores with our initials,

we shouted from the dark cove of the seawall stairwell

(themselves a rock pool)

to strangers passing in the twilight

'we aren't thugs, come this way',

impromptu guiding lights in a black world of human reefs.

That very day we had skinny dipped in the North Sea,

not one hundred yards from where I and my family

have ritually placed our infant feet,

generation after generation, from various walks and an orchard

of trees,

for the first time, in salt water.

13

Holding you like I might a bottle of wine

On my favourite sofa. both eyes reflect

over my shoulder

your mother, left. your father, right.

Each one separate and both combined

Your father’s face, a pride you cannot fathom yet

through blurred vision people become the air.

And hers, simply in disdain of your

furrowed brow to do so.

Outward from those gleaming irses,

micro-film to read under a voice projecting later,

in my hands, one

cradles your tiny head,

the other on the small of your back,

no wider than a handspan.

I hope, for years to come,

it is impossible to watch your

developing repertoire,

without seeing one, or the other,

in either eye.

14

The Loveseat

While She shaped

the pyramid,

spending an aeon

crafting for others,

He whittled a select timber shaft

Each season

scrimshawed his digits into the grain.

Fashioned an X-brace marionette’s soul

to rest on spun struts, a giant’s cane,

cross-hatched the

skeleton frame with

upholstery.

Her choice, rested. Only to

spring the leaves, decades on,

to recede under worn, time-drawn

arses.

After filling the chair’s bladder -

filaments:

horse hair, peacock feather,

phoenix mane, barguest tail,

complete

the swan’s neck of wood between them

hands laced,

A third presence

giving them away.

only one.

Their loveseat.

15

Valley

Home. Home is in the hills.

Among valleys where flora turns

emerald ice dead winter,

Where water tastes of dew from

the strands in a duck’s moustache.

House is the habitat.

Home when breath breathes ‘welcome back’

a ghost-hello, condensing words in air.

‘kettle’s on’, or ‘put kettle on’,

steam birthing brew.

The brick and mortar, the

tile and plaster, carpet and cutlery

can be dust

For trusting limbs, natural smiles,

are crux to kitchenware teeth.

16

Postcards from the Mentally Ill

Let fly a culture of Freudian slip

between the legible

black on white

indelible ink, imperative:

I was not involved with my cousin Carol.

as though the recipient

has power to endow dignity

lost to diffraction patterns

in boyhood mishap

otherwise a foul in genealogy

Yet heightened amiability,

the fact you know the middle-name,

despite the impossibility

licks my stamp

but perhaps is perturbing

Ominous •

your still using telegram stops • as big as

squashed flies •

on a square no bigger than • a chapbook fly leaf •

One mind in staccato rhythm

17

A simple admission

that quirks are not faults

despite harm.

Stability is a priori

the human condition: a smidgeon of

grit to the egg and the chicken

18

Coping Ugly

You were a rubbish dog

and all I could think about;

never came when called,

scared of the stick when thrown,

would lurk in the dark of the stairwell –

where I still step over

the memory of your fury body

ready to turn tail and bite

under pressure of a foot,

didn’t like children,

had a mind all your own.

You were an absolute dog.

I honestly think something in my mechanism went,

when we weren’t allowed the formality of burial.

This is me attempting ‘goodbye’.

.

19

Rolling Hulks

Exibit chesspiece,

Leviathan, foreigner, imported, cast iron, steel-alloy, turntable,

turnpike,

contacts ignite, piston rupture.

Walking around, tripped by invisible

wires between men and their cameras.

Iron giants – immobilised, geriatric, asleep.

Oil on the air, in the lungs -

sorry, excuse me – Finley, come here! -

Excuse me. Stephenson’s over here, Gresley’s

grizzling in the corners, counting the lubricate spots on drip-trays

and the days until fire breathes in the smokebox,

pending steps on the footplate, shattering pressure to release, to

accelerate.

20

In the Sun

In the sun

somewhere, anywhere, dusty

a man, no name, anyone

digs to divine water’s loci.

In the sun

there, everywhere, all over

an opaque hand, bigger than the Cayman Islands

salts the earth, drives water deeper, undermines his spring

quicker.

This limb, spanning the hemisphere

incubates expenditure

in its palm half a world away, thinking of it

as offspring - hatchlings

Justified by this view,

obliviously watches the world over,

- this new mother –

fleshier bodies, younger than a babble, weaker than a cry, be

spent as walkingdollar.

21

It is said they are developing.

Really they bide time, choosing

to preserve the truth of the matter,

opting out of a world so ready to

mortgage humanity

happily

to uphold

the spectacle of a filing cabinet,

draws akimbo,

haze of paper aflutter,

balanced perfectly on the snout

of a pink, pot, piggybank.

the size of jersey

To expose this manic circus trick,

replacing marble and brick with glass, and air, and window

polish.

will cost a mint in sweat and dough -

To refrain from doing so?

May cost the earth, but nothing more.

22

Voyager on the Heliopause

A particle to cure the common cold

passed me by 12 light-years ago

and teased me

for my metal-flake paint

within its orbit, I didn’t feel less parky -

and if I gathered it up with my

monkey-puzzle-tree limbs

It wouldn’t benefit the sole of a soul.

Like my dish feels less dishy than 35 years ago -

I can only compare it to the sun

which without fail, is brighter, more circular

and has featured in more chart hits than myself -

but Supernovae are

beautiful cracks

in the heavily-rouged makeup

of constellations;

so I will play the waiting game

recording nuclear death throes

with a satellite lit by wilting solar buds -

sun, sun, sun – here it comes.

My partner and I

parted ways at Saturn.

Since then I am girlishly attracted

23

to anyone with an immediate gravity.

though I think companionship

is a form

of poorly interpreted

Stockholm Syndrome.

solitude is the way forward

Filling time via a method of entropy,

I take sick-days,

to indulge a passion

for amateur photography.

Travelling nowhere

at thousands of metres per second,

I seize the ultimate

holiday snapshots,

but keep none.

An orange-rind neutron star collapsed

on the walrus back of the universe,

giving my lenses a little-death, as they suspended its entirety.

But developers lack business

on High-street Heliopause,

so I beam every bit and byte along a wave,

through a keyhole of space-time

home

I wonder if they receive my postcards.

24

The Spectacles

Are a pair of transparent con men,

thick as thieves.

Through their obscuring prescription,

we take turns to wear and rent

our eyes.

Not made for us, but for another

long dead.

They are framed for something

they have not done and cannot do

Warping the world as through departed eyes

Death’s personal kaleidoscope.

Impossible

25

Bright Side of a Black Hole

On the Brigg, an old man shifts past,

barely walking for the shake.

His are no longer legs – like yours –

but reference points for gravity’s centre.

You spot the bright side of a black hole,

then, pulling us through it, whisper;

That dance will ne’er catch on.

Now at your hearth,

three squares to the right of your 73rd

birthday,

you tell us all, with head like a weathered eggshell

that from a defunct brain,

your shake has shimmied in its wake

to the tips, of the tips, of your arms.

Someone sheds a tear for your heyday, to remember

a privateer discreet in drink,

Cultivator, in small quantities of marijuana.

Growing green in your greenhouse,

among the innocent tomata, Master Cropper;

Heyup, Cocker.

Back at your hearth, the hub of your warmth, your oven

a tray of sand dries,

cracking, blackening,

like hands mummified with living.

Why, Dad, bake the Brigg?

One wry smile, a grain of grit in your humour

Am makin egg-timers.

26

Interstellar probes called Gladys,

Telegrams from schizophrenic philanthropists,

Wine bottle babies cherished as though they

were made of glass.

This is for everyone I love. Thank you.

Dream. Blacker. Faceless. Engineers.

©, etc.