Contributor: Ray Miller

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All was lost on a daily basis:
she believed that there must be a thief
who was stealing for other faces
in need of spectacles and teeth.

The nocturnal feast was unfinished:
a weak bladder and toothless gums
left lipstick stains on the Guinness
and a trail of biscuit crumbs

to the Inco pad down the toilet
and a pool of piss on the ground.
The baby alarm had gone silent
and her knitting was all unwound

around a false breast on the carpet
that no-one was eager to touch
and her diary with the targets
that she’ll miss so very much.

She liked Flanagan and Allen,
and subscribed to The People’s Friend,
was a fan of Britain’s Got Talent –
she never made it to the end.


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Contributor: Ray Miller

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I just don’t know what to do with my self
and it’s seldom I can locate it.
I’m circled on maps but when I stop to ask
a dust has covered the traces.
In living rooms and in limbo,
on all fours and on tiptoe I’ve chased it.
I’ve read the self-help literature,
Bergson et al and etcetera:
the brain is but a filterer
and in theory all can be heard and seen,
what is now and what has been.
The world is on my fingerprints,
its garbage overflows the bins
and I am blown by violins
to search my self to smithereens;
down half-remembered alleyways
the detritus of all the days
has settled on our counterpane.
Let’s fumble locks and zips and lips
too intimately intricate,
let’s laugh and listen to the drips
of a viscous blue percussion.
Let’s steal a ball with a private invite
and dare the world to pursue;
then at daybreak when the dust has flattened
and the great birds hover and squawk,
I’ll shrink smaller than invisible
and beg you to turn on the dark.


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Contributor: Ray Miller

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In the park where part of British Leyland stood,
they’ve planted maples imported from Germany.
On Northfield Past we’re aghast, it is nicht sehr gut
and the site’s in a state of emergency.

We’ve left jumpers for goalposts, walls chalked for wickets
and the railways before Dr Beeching,
we’ve forgot happy days of ration books, Rickets,
those nights without worries or central heating.

Where the planes were made by our grandfathers,
that prised this land from beneath the jackboot
and forged the downfall of Der Luftwaffe,
the enemy wood is at last taking root.

On Northfield Past there’s talk of tunnels being dug,
fungal diseases that cannot be treated.
Careless talk costs lives – don’t tell those you love.
Change group privacy from Open to Secret.


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