Category: Diesel on Gravel

DIESEL ON GRAVEL – 1986-1989 First Flash Fictions

Poems written in London and Oxfordshire. Published in early 1990s in Last Gasp pamphlets. Last Gasp was a poetry open mic I helped run with poets Giles Goodland and Bridget Kursheed in Oxford.

From 1986 I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver and especially his book FIRES.  Indeed I attended his memorial readings event in London and saw Edmund White, Richard Ford and Salman Rushdie read in his honour.

I think this volume is the ‘lost volume’ as I was living at home in Didcot and totally cut off from literary world from 1988 until 1990.

I did do some readings through the Last Gasp group until I moved to Edinburgh in 1993.

None of these poems have been seen apart from in these hand made pamphlets.

Style note all hand written then typed on my mother’s old typewriter.

The last few pages of the document as pdf have originals and some uncollected poems.

The blue pen and line through a poem are from Giles Goodland when selecting for a pamphlet…I did not have second copies as everything had to be typed by hand …so here it is..

Diesel on Gravel…..1990

Diesel on Gravel PDF

Arteries: Thames Valley Texas

Arteries

“Never knew what hit them ,
the impact must have been tremendous
to have left that much blood on the road,
looked like it had exploded”.

My father talking about the accident.
One side of the car had caved right in
and there was a bloodstain twenty yards long
across both sides of the road.

“What was left of the deer was laid on the grass
like a sack of bones”.

Ten days later.

In the same kitchen he is gingerly fingering
row upon row of tiny pink pills.

“Everybody’s on them these days”
My mother says, trying to lighten the road ahead.

But we could all see what he could see.

Moving through the trees.

His mother heart failure 65.
His mother’s father heart attack 65.

Right now I prefer not to look too far ahead.
But I can feel movement deep in the forest of arteries and veins.
Something unseen and unexpected pushing out..

Toward the lights.

Addendum: This poem was written in 1991 my father remained in good health until 2002 when at the age of 70 he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and died in 2004.

Another poem from my back pages.
From an overall collection called

Diesel on Gravel 1991

England Swings: Thames Valley Texas

No not a reference to Sergeant Pepper that was 20 but out of curiosity here an unseen poem from 1991.
 Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now..

ENGLAND SWINGS

Soho doorway, December ’66
sleet melting on daisy-patterned
plastic raincoat, seeping to salt lines
up purple suede slip-ons
Her front teeth bite her bottom lip
as she shivers, flicks her fringe,
and waits for a Mini-Cooper S
to arrive in a spray of slush,
Boutique lights flash in chrome wheels
splattered with ice, laced with tinsel.

Saturday morning, December ’86
she stands outside her mum’s semi
as her hubby shifts furniture out.
Cascades of bills, snaps, cards
fall from a draw into the dustbin.
Then a photo of her at 17
surfaces from the layers of 20 years.
Bobbed hair, raincoat against chequers,
she is staring, unwed into space
as flecks of snow speck the black lid.

Another poem from my back pages.

From an overall collection called

Diesel on Gravel 1991

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