Now only a distance roof peeks over embankment steep,
Hidden in anonymity – cut off.
As bypass and the haughty highway run arrow straight,
With haste to expedite the profit of the chase - to end up – nowhere.

Always in a rush to some far horizon in monotony of sameness;
That induces sleep and angst in equal measure.
To create a race against ourselves – frustration filled;
With congested traffic; gridlock and hate.

So I muse on time past,
When “tom-tom” was a drum;
“Map” – but land agent’s note for Liege, of tithing lands.
Signposts an unknown,
Distances measured by a walking day for most;
With time to smell the season’s round;
Sample nature’s storehouse from hedge
To savour long its bountiful joys.

Cheered by hues of celandine and meadow sweet – as gift for the arrival;
Destination sure in hearth and home.
Far from a ride post haste, for an exalted few – a portent of danger and distress;
Ill meet unexpected measure of the rolling random road;
Embanked about, by myriad feet of generations past.

So I wonder – what exactly is conquered by haste?
Fashioned by those who seek to out run time itself.
Yet when all is set at nought – but profit;
Then nought matters – so to our shame – all suffer loss.

So I long, for time worn track of foot rung stones
I fancy on the breeze – I hear – voices -  long ago echoes,
For I would dance with them – carol the ancient songs with lightened step.
To learn, with joy their history unwrapped;
Memorialised by place name – distinction consealed 
Not impersonal with artless similarity.

My destination too – on roads not travelled – sweetened with home hearth welcome
May I forever put aside angst wrought by “the must do” and “should have done”.
Slough off stress of constant expectation, to be needed;
Yet plagued – with mobile phone.
Would that it ceases to jingle – ever pressing demand for instant response.
So I might pause to hear birds sing – listen to zephyr whisper – content:
Discovered again the gentle undulating road to somewhere.

When the silence is broken
By the sound of thought,
I dip into the freedom of memory
To see me through.

I remember, wine in the bottom of my mug
But I made a coffee,
And I drank it anyway, and accused myself because of it:
So just to let you know, you’re not completely to blame.

You accuse me of being insane,
Who’s to say that’s a bad thing?
It’s just different
Not wrong! not wrong.
The accusations fly but I didn’t do it.
At least I don’t think so.

Is it because I’m the darkness
That haunts your light?
Am I the sin
You desperately try to resist?

You blame me of many things:
Rightly, or wrongly,
Who’s to say?
You say I’m black hearted,
That I’m broken inside.
And you say my soul is dark.
I say it’s not.
This is me defending myself.

With all finger pointing, rumour and scuttlebutt,
And all the trouble you’ve caused,
I’ve come out of it relatively unscarred.
There’s silver in my hair:
But no gold,
There’s no silence in my head,
It’s broken by thought.

PARP

The arsehole in the car behind me honked his horn and it slipped away from me. The idea I mean, not the car. I tried so hard to hold onto it but it just wouldn’t stay still. As my car picked up speed so did the invention, rolling its way out of my mind’s grasp. I felt sick. Society would never forgive me if it ever found out. The greatest invention. A supreme fabrication. Gone.

I glanced in the mirror and saw him. The man who had stolen the invention from humanity. Talking on his fucking mobile phone and riding my bumper.

It’s difficult to know whether it was a decision I made or whether I performed the feat on a subconscious level. I just waited until I reached seventy miles per hour and then stamped on the brakes. With a rending, tearing metallic howl his car violently mounted mine and dragged the pair of them into the hard shoulder and the bushes beyond.

As I dragged myself from the airbag filled wreckage I touched a wound on the side of my head and felt the warm blood on my fingers, the pain shooting reassuringly through me. I was alive. No thanks to my bloody idiot of a subconscious.

Dragging my left leg behind me I moved to see if I could see him and he was there, screeching and honking. I turned my back on the cars and listened again. It sounded like geese. Then, in an instant it came back to me and I realised, too late, that the greatest invention was useless. Pointless. I’ve wreaked mankind’s retribution on this man and it was all just a mistake.

A rubbish invention. And as if that wasn’t bad enough an idiotic idea to boot.

I breathed heavily, coughing as I slowly moved myself further and further from his howls then sat down on the crash barriers at the roadside and waited.

Listen now, this is where it gets tricky. There is a boat that sails up and down the coast between Newbiggin and Skegness. The purpose of this is clear, you tell me, to ensure that the pipeline doesn’t spring a leak because if it does disaster will strike. We will have no beach. We will be miserable and in a beachless stupor. They learned their lessons, you tell me, on the west coast when a pipe burst. That’s how the Isle of Man was made, they just didn’t catch it in time.

But what about the Skegnetians, I ask. I buy you another pint (just the one) and you go on, telling me about how the diver-ninjas keep an eye on the beach. Try to make sure that they only turn the pipe on when there is nobody on the beach but it doesn’t always work. Only yesterday a small boy, six years old, in a blue swimming costume and his dad, thirty two, in a red swimming costume and sunglasses vanished in a puff of sand. Sucked into the pipe. Two days later and they are wandering our promenade, lost and confused.

Some people down there are bound to notice but you tell me not to worry, that by the time we have stolen their beach it will be too late and besides we have ninja-divers in case the good people of Skegness try to remove the pipeline. It’s better they stay away. St Bartholomew’s Church is full of them now; dog walkers, dogs, holiday makers, swimmers, even an ice cream man. The police are keeping it under wraps.

When I ask you what we can do you shrug and sip your pint so I decide to go to Margaret’s Card Shop, buy a postcard ‘Greetings From Newbiggin by the Sea’ and send it, an open letter (well, an open post-card). On it I will write in my best handwriting:

“Our sincere apologies to the good people of Skegness.
Yours in thanks,
A representative of Newbiggin by the Sea.”

You say I lack imagination and I always have.

In something more,

I know there is something running

In parallel and

In harmony with my senses, but;

I can’t lay my hands on it.

I wait and watch and

Ideally,

I would like to come to terms with and

Into contact with the

Ideology of this – the

Incessant,

Idiosyncrasies of my eccentricities: but,

I am a scribe of no discernable form,

I am so depraved, so deprived

I see: what?

I see what I want to believe,

I feel no emotion sometimes

I sense no feeling.

Imagine a world without

Imagination:

Insipid and

Insidious.

Inside this shell of flesh and skin

I writhe like the writer

I am!