Issue 27: Clive Gresswell

Shadow Reel

taking a police chief to the scene. of an opera danced in the bones of sweet ballet. wrestling with timetables stuffed with olives and an acute if uncertain shift in scenery to dress it is undressed in grey the colour of all flowers seen through his microscope not yours but his. planting a coal miner in the history of soundbites to a ridiculous degree of shelves.

not standing. unstanding. in the beauteous cabinet walnut waltz to upset observers of the backbone of the book. called something elsewhere but not here. somewhere else. the unfurling of an object. it is worth sixpence. it is worth a handkerchief in a mystery play or else a pandemic written about twice.

already written on a daily schedule of rice fitting inside out grey hairs obvious to gladiators. in roman times. the romanians were more sensible than celery. somehow a thumbprint. it was not an inky thumb. nor a bowl of salad where the actors’ voices were raised as the bare knuckle soup ejaculated a pardon.

a keep on. a keep on going said the owner of a ship. not the ship. a ship. recalling in a baritone way she let her hair down last summer grown as it was. the ants crawling in the leaky boat.

 she took a photograph of them within the confines of a tomato factory. before the centimetres were invented or invited to a levelling up of randy football pitches that were all gay. and played for england. and uxbridge. and ruislip.

any peach in the former county of middlesex. of middlemarch. a season for all spectators to enjoy all the hangings long before space travel. she made her hands into a fist and stuck out her tongue. that way to cure a grey soundbite. this way for a green.

the workers are clocking out. the factory is a random triangle of capital. god bless her and the tomatoes. in a béarnaise sauce or. grilled with onions and a slip of the tongue. it’s cool to lounge about in a bathing suit. my three-piece was cut to ribbons through an infestation of sharks.

antelopes tell one another a train is due. It’s overdue and high time beyond eclipses of the second coming and a stitch on the clock says the tomato factory is closed. in a state of despair. of disrepair.

like my cousin lucy who sits and sews. we can all gather a bodice into any hotel but it’s disabusing the clientele of their right to stay which is a tricky fish. a tricky fish is a lemon sole. battered and refused restitution the hill climbed by the ants was made by an aunt.

most people turn their backs on learning japanese. the tomato is a cunning fruit. has been undeterred since the industrial revolution. soundly sleeping soundbites invade the silent cinema. that’s where the hours disappeared. before the gathering of grey and the mention of the insipid insurrection.

before the cockroach suckers broke into this aquarium and ate all the fish. all the lemon sole were there but they were not properly prepared. sometimes a stroll in a park in the evening can be invigorating. sometimes temptation is a thing. lemon sole is not a thing. it is oily and bitter. better that it ends now before launching anymore rockets into space.

two can share a tomato as well as one. a size of centimetres was not banished. a timetable calls out for preambles around a courtyard where a stroll is often perfected. in metalanguage the knife twists into his wound and more ecstatic plants flowering in ages of butterfly milk.

toss the toast twice into his inky background. a temerity of angels invades football stands and a mockery of skinheads. research into computer versions is a candle. it is light. it is languorous. and it is heavy like a portion of squid eggs. floating gently before your eyes as if played on a piano. soundbites redirected in cancer cells. an ice cream on a sunny day is not a nightmare.

it is a tradition among headline writers. to say black is not true. white is not true. a piece of infinity is not there. you have seen it weary in the morning. alerting the black that is not there. is not not nor black.

 a trifle is a mere investment of millions in offshore accounts. by government ministers and their shadows of crime. the chief constable is involved. at the outskirts of opera. beyond measurements of time say the colour grey floating army techniques to fool the chinese whose cooking irradiates fear of lost time. fear of not. lost time dancing a ballet of tomfoolery and a daisy chain of metalanguage languid in the bottling of various forms of the arts and their ridiculous memoirs in and out.

new fashions forming on the cloud’s horizon in sky-blue dots of say irascible inclination throughout different forms of dialect. until finding the ballet. and in your shoes it’s off to capture a silent scream scene at the cinema near you captioned in prosody of murkiness. we drew blood with a kiss and pressed our thumbs together pledging. a vow in the scouts is worth two in the bush. just as jaywalking fetches admiration.

rising of a cake is not like the dawn of autumn. bees weave complex mysteries in the haunting of many cafes. to want more out we must first drink huge amounts of caffeine. talk incessantly about hieronymus bosch. watching reruns of the southbank show and buildings at eye-level being concave.

justice is swiftly done. here on the islands. many shadows are cast of mouthings just in time. others are more sinister and pulsate gently. a small lecture on the rights of passage is a distinguishing feature. not many is not many nor. a levelling up requires nearby football pitches.

 a bunch of skinheads paints my kitchen. in white. my profile denies its history face to face. with any incendiary device does not matter if it asks. questioning the statute. lying with the statue. allowing gentle pulling of wings in wanton fashion statement is a new hobby of the avant-garde.

often a doctor calling can be a sign that the illness is getting acute. or not. it’s a binary question of right and wrong. hunting down immutable laws forages in the undergrowth of lizzie’s undergarments until happening on the house of usher.

a pink piano fortissimo rocks gently on the shelf just off the irish coast and sat in a sad small café by the spray where winds whip up a fury. eyes reinvent reasons for democracy. another is the soundbite.

drowning in the sea of words washes over him until all publicity is no publicity is equal to the task. to enjoy walking circular routes as they hunt down illegitimate brides.  a wedding is not an excuse to be insipid.

a deep cut is a crew cut shorn in the navy. wavy lines is not not straight but familiar to a glistening. which is not gold to rust. to say it swallowed indigestible facts of pornography wrenched from the snarling mouth. of a puce mother.

a student studying semantics at the seaside is not a trifle. is not impregnated with hieroglyphics or the answers posed by mathematicians into black and white pictures. where to b is a to be or not. as if a is anymore substantial in the peak district.

drawing a silent breath from the soundbites is not a religious fervour. nor can dancing elephants instruct engineers appropriately without guide books. containing illustrations of the sex act in a vast array of colours.

plucked conveniently from any narrow road where the cows graze without gentrification calling on the blossom. to perfume. is a perfume. delightful to the touch a slick-backed razor haircut is not a saintly visage. is not a tremendous cluster of atoms. not a walk is not a walk is not a walk along the canal amid the stench of the fireflies and screeching of the cats. not made of the cats. whose constitution is remembering.

as the sky opens its blue yonder and this is not a ruse. not a pair of red shoes. enamoured by a poll of the time of day. it says we have found you. so it says. no use crying over split infinitives.

everyone rushes to the seaside to see the whales frolic just before the red sky beckons. he sowed on your badge. it was the colour purple. the colour purple was not it. not in any of the home counties. while we listened to the metalanguage chirping in the trees. listened to the metalanguage purple on the breeze.

purple credit was not a purple sweet. but it could become the magnificent milkman. how he hankered down to oil the handbrakes of the car. the white car which was not a blue horse. nor chestnut mare.

to transport us to the hospital where transplanting techniques gather apace and the sown on soundbites cut from the book’s dust jacket read medical dictionaries far into the night. a confidence of unemployed. whispering to vegetarian blacksmiths some oaths of whalebone mirth.  Reaffirmed on a tomato paste in factories pronouncing capitalist debris to stitch some metalanguage into realms of godliness. unknown spiritual healers carve statuettes out of butter milk and run. but they are followed. wearily by those who secretly inject social intercourse into flaming wheat fields where politicians lurk and plot.

downfalls of the monarchy etched into crumbling cliffs at stolen seashores encrypted with a surgeon soup. waiting for a bus is not waiting for godot. is waiting for godot its game. how much is a watt of electricity worth in terms of the star cycle of a minnow. who can tell where anything came from.

not in the tomato factory which blisters. tributes to four musicians from liverpool. perhaps a roman candle is lit. perhaps it is lit in the oven. perhaps it is lit in the visage of a thousand portraits of sunflowers bursting at the seams. seems like an old clay pipe in a way. which resists temptation. which. resists temptation. to follow instructions posted onto a doll’s house window.

 to play at grown men. to fathom the indigestion of a summary. broadcast lately on the ten o’clock news. round and round the goldfish bobs. it has lost its footing in a cave. many regards to tardy girls who floundered at the boundary. a picket fence. a white picket fence erected between two world wars.

the house has been abandoned by its colour. its tomatoes have faded. one who lived there was a king among electricians and wrote many famous operas. the pickle jar left unaided. on the counter by the army of fascists who danced into photographs of jilted moons. left angry at the politeness of justified notices. swimming in the blue lagoon of public opinion. noted as temporarily insane. and left with the horses.

an electrode on his brain. neurons seep across the carpet. writhing and investing human palpitations. up to the porch and no further. a black and white film of your mother and father. jousting. arranging for an imperfection of babies to gargle easy on the mutton. mustard is a computer’s memory banks. refreshed and restored along with this famous 19th-century painting shattering the walls where it was first suggested that the photograph of yellow rape seed would look gorgeous on the mantle.

unless it was was not a nazi interloper who shadowed winston churchill dressed as a cigar. he’s nobody’s fool that black penny stamp. it rises to the occasion infused with silence. another silence encompasses the hearing. the hearing is not here and now. but if not then when. she asks. a lighter is not in darkness. a substitute is not a circle. is not a hot bath. is not a miracle baby.

never before seen footage is recalled and vertical. it is a soundbite of cosy facts. stitched in metalanguage and not a penny for your thoughts. this circle is not rare. it points to the future which is a hole. a whole demanded of blinkered soldiers up and in a blind panic.

starlets of the silver screen stupefy arm wrestling advertising supervisors in a disc. it’s a reason to be modest or else to modify some calcium. it climbs across the bridge of your nose. arguing is not a gentlemanly sport. often it ends in blood feuds or christmas cards.

the muscle of musicality bears note. nothing is said otherwise. you could tune into a different radio frequency. hymn singing creates a new resonance for gipsy folk. they each reach for a violin. violence storms electrical stores a freewheeling plummet. the earth sings softly to itself so many times. a woman laughed pleasantly at the sun. she was seen in many films. often with a tomato there is great pause for thought.

thinking is in metalanguage sorted before the second industrial revolution. an inspiring array of colours is a good code for market forces. the market index was ponderous in its inception. slices is metalanguage for bathing. stride out into the countryside which gives you a glimpse. tear an individual space for your mastery of tongue.

a factory is not necessary. a different dialect can be uttered with inevitability. always take care when cursing porridge. a soundbite for that is black paper. a soundbite for which is newspaper.

Clive Gresswell, 63, is an innovative writer and poet from Luton. His latest chapbook Atoms has just been published by erbacce press (2021). More details on his poet page on the erbacce site.

Copyright © 2022 by Clive Gresswell, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

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