splintered doors
make carpenters smile
splintered jobs
make employers smile
splintered lives
makes blistered feet smile
splintered land
makes landscapers smile
splintered land
makes housebuilders smile
lets all be splintered
into a regeneration smile.
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she knitted fine clothes
for the baby in her head
every night her husband
rammelled in drink
like a confusion of thread
till one night she saw him
collapsed on the marital bed
wheezing in alcoholic haze
she took out her needle
and thread and he awoke
as the first needle entered skin
she knocked him out with her
new frying pan, then knitted
his fat skin to the mattress.
saw him awake while her needles
clattered and smiled at his shouts
and the blood of his struggle.
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oak roots secure this earth
where other roots held
now severed
the link with coal beneath
a new balancing pool
controlled management
should riverside threshold
brim over with opposition
and flood this land again
a manmade gob filled
in, tongue ripped out
oak used to preserve status
again coddle chaos
the opposing gob
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How can you be in two places
at once? I asked. A Christian
friend replied ” You can have
one foot inside the door
and the other foot outside.”
You would be forever
on the threshold, neither
one nor the other, or both.
A fence sitter, neither
Summer or Winter
God or Man.
Would you sacrifice the other
to be wholly another? To step
in and close the door
shut out the weather
from the other side.
Are you coming in or what?
Your letting in a right breeze?
Put wood in the hole.
Decide whether your in or out!
*******
I watch the traffic lights
consider a walk this way or
a green man allows me
to avoid bloodied bone
my mouth and ears
thresholds and doors
full of oaklimbs and leaves
reborn I stretch down
to deep dark moist
I stretch up to cloudlight
barkskin palmtouched
I let others breathe
shelter and endure
*******
moors were once forests
national parks heavy industrial
this oak headland a pitsite
lads snap off livelimbs
anarchic coppicing
black dogshitbags sway
on limbs left alone
don’t visit in a storm
oaks are lightningtrees
people can be oaks
oakgroves of druids
duir means a door
exit and entrance
raw open wounds of sacrifice
still bleed sap
this hand has molded
a garden out of wildlife
words out of nonsense
she used to say “when
one door closes
another opens”
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moors were once forests
national parks heavy industrial
this oak headland a pitsite
lads snap off livelimbs
anarchic coppicing
black dogshitbags sway
on limbs left alone
don’t visit in a storm
oaks are lightningtrees
people can be oaks
oakgroves of druids
duir means a door
exit and entrance
raw open wounds of sacrifice
still bleed sap
this hand has molded
a garden out of wildlife
words out of nonsense
she used to say “when
one door closes
another opens”
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I watch the traffic lights
consider a walk this way or
a green man allows me
to avoid bloodied bone
my mouth and ears
thresholds and doors
full of oaklimbs and leaves
reborn I stretch down
to deep dark moist
I stretch up to cloudlight
barkskin palmtouched
I let others breathe
shelter and endure
via WordPress for Phone http://goo.gl/j6Fzhf
How can you be in two places
at once? I asked. A Christian
friend replied ” You can have
one foot inside the door
and the other foot outside.”
You would be forever
on the threshold, neither
one nor the other, or both.
A fence sitter, neither
Summer or Winter
God or Man.
Would you sacrifice the other
to be wholly another? To step
in and close the door
shut out the weather
from the other side.
Are you coming in or what?
Your letting in a right breeze?
Put wood in the hole.
Decide whether your in or out!
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https://m.soundcloud.com/paul_laurence/the-hill-in-the-light
in the hearing of pigeons
cooing in the twilight
you can hold out to the dark land
make the crunch of your boot
squelch in the hard washed
and screened lives of miners
all to be buried again. Beneath.
If going beneath into pressured dark
who but the ghost of ‘Jacksy’.
All to be buried like Gary Jackson.
They called him ‘Jacksy’ in the showers.
It was on a Wednesday. Seven days
after his thirty seventh birthday
he did not want to spend three quarters
of a shift cleaning the belt. He was
spading muck from a belt wheel
with his mate seventeen year old ‘Big’
Mick. His spade got caught in the wheel
he should have stopped beforehand.
Belt drew him in. Cut his head neatly
into two pieces. In a snap of the fingers
Mick simply watched it happen.
The slow cut. A second passed.
It took seven men to peel and carry Gary
from the belt. The funeral took place
on the third day. ‘Big’ Mick was given
a month’s leave. He never recovered.
After his leave Mick had a seated job
down the belt on which Gary had died.
Suddenly and throughout the day
he was called on the pit phone by another
miner calling himself “The ghost of Gary
Jackson”. He could tell it was another
miner. They put a notice up in the showers
and the phone calls stopped.
A great mound of slag is being reseeded.
They have spread the difficult earth.
Taken him from a birth in the pressured dark
and scattered his broken body as waste
and reseeded with hawthorn, fern willow
and couch grass. These plants knit
together the broken flesh. His pieces
reassembled into a hill in the light.
His broken body held tense by roots
fed by rain and light. He is different now.
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. competence
As if you could
work without fear
of making mistakes
the “Paul, I’d like a word…”
work without worry
of targets not reached
the “Paul, are you happy here..”
work without the dole
and it’s keen edge
that hovers
. above
. your
. head
because you are unimportant
easily replaceable
a bum on a seat
because you have to pay
for your home
for your insurances
for your illusion of steadiness
the “Paul, I’m sorry we’re going
to have to let you go.”
. ********
. let go
I am cold toast
left in the rush
I am unused loo paper
left on wet floor
I am spilt shampoo
left in empty bath
I am a crisp new
P45.
I am a warm hand
in my child’s warm hand
I am needed.
I see that now.
********
In England a P45 is what your employer gives you when he sacks you
. ***********
. The Actual Office Rules
You do not have a designated desk or computer or chair.
You will have to find one and ensure you are ready to receive calls when your shift starts.
As it takes fifteen minutes to set up your systems we recommend you get to work half an hour beforehand. You will not be paid for this half hour.
If you have to attend the funeral of a close relative we will call you the day after to ask why you are not in work.
If we do allow you to arrange a funeral of your closest relatives a team leader will phone you every day you are absent from work to monitor your progress.
. **************
. crapper time
You can tell
temper of our times
in my crapper at work.
Times bowl brims
with bogpaper
and shit
Lads flush once
find it won’t go,
flush again.
Have done
leave without washing hands.
I need to tell ’em
‘pump it lad’
but we’re all
timed by work
computer
and three times late
two warnings, late
again ‘investigation’
in another room.
Late again, dismissal.
They march you to gates.
. ***********
. annoying
all you can hear is them
all they can hear is you
how can I help you I say
you are the annoying person
I spoke to before
I do not think I am I say
please speak up.
I cannot trust
that someone will
do what they say
they will do
please speak up
and clearly
please chase this
I explain that if there
are any problems
we will know but
we cannot test it now
you are the person
I spoke to before
and you are annoying
. ***********
. workaround
some systems don’t work
so you have to do
a work around
when this becomes the system
I don’t know
my bus
takes a detour for roadworks
or accident
something tells me
this is not temporary
. ************
. headset
is a dark link
on his head between patches
of grey and crows feet
chubby fingers
he touch phones
using an eraser
on the end of a HB
thin gold framed bifocals
peer down
at a computer screen
angled lectern upwards
he cannot afford retirement
. *************
. working is reworking
sunlight
warmth makes me
even less interested
at work
she is retiring
already has a date
she is older than me
she will get bored
I need part time
use space to the full
not used to applying
rescue my cv
writing is rewriting
living is reliving
working is reworking
. *************
. missell
I have not
spoken
to a customer
through the frown
of a headset phone
for three years.
I follow a process.
I cannot improvise.
I smile
so headset frown
and mouth’s smile
make a customer
lifecycle
prelife, inlife
new package
make a customer
complaint cycle
define, investigate,
solve, redefine
I put customer
on hold
then eff and blind.
I need to go
part time or retire.
This is the time
I need
a kick up the cycle
of my arse.
. *************
. The Apologetic Life
late exit
late bus
apologies
broken down bus
apologies
late entrance
apologies
penalised
pay docked
angry callers
apologies
late home
apologies
restless night
. *************
. . shift change
new hours
of grind
not yet comfy
arse fidgets
till it finds
a settled place
for cheeks
then they change
your shift again
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The Wombwell Rainbow 