On returning home
Family issues have required me to return to the Isle of Man, where I lived from 1966-1979. It has changed a lot but still has a geography of memory and poetry.... Ersatz Memphis Your old school only with extensions, of stiff joints, Smeared and running down, draining, creaking gulls, salt grime sticky, blown dry, of corrosion to that pretender syndrome. Newness equals something quintessential like the early eighties - ersatz Memphis Of a bad idea bankrupt in poor locations, dregs. Sacrificing First Nation hate sanded & mouldering to resentment that corporal arrogance aspires only to commissioner syndrome. But linger Nice skies and fresh air and concrete of pebbles and small stones cracking and damp With salt Memories like the Latin for ‘flying buttress’ Normal distribution is to American churches as vinyl over slate and stone is to Old haunts – there and gone with scaffolding in beautiful geometry with only Spring further