Streets

STREETS 990209 (2240)
By JC STREET © 2004

There’s always a Church
Street and a Station
Street and sometimes too, a
Station Rise where people
greet and Mill
Street’s another
old familiar face, where
daffodils grew once

in an old ditch by the rusting
wheel, the

mill-girls churched and taken
to the station via
Station street and
here and there in every nation,
there’s
a notional devotion to time’s
dreary
passing places

from the one-track lanes

of Derbyshire and Hertfordshire to
London’s funny faces and
other places

foreign
spaces, foreign faces, fighting
my street’s better then your
Station Road, the Church
where mill-girls wend
their
ways to forelock-
tugging husbands’ beds; my
street, milling and spilling
out of factory gates, factory
gates, black-biking up to the
station, pedaling

for the nation
strong hands on
handlebar
moustache and ships and sealing wax
from Indies east and west & Clyde-
side,

hulls ‘a turvy on the slips,
slippin’
down the greasy ways, away Dom
Perignon aglaze

II.

My street, street of days
and dreams and swingin’
roun’ the lamp-post onna wee rope

(granny’s havin’ a stroke)

ding, dinga ding, ding, ding,

Away, westering down my
street-sun
disappears into the woods, the
gloam woods

the woods, the WAGES

OF SIN IS DEATH

on the black
asphalt pipe, runs
above the soil, runs
down, gloom-in again, in
to the dark, mossy places, the dark
mossy places where the dead dream,

dream

of no more, the woods just
before the prefabs, Edna’s
hair in braids

III.

Viau
VEE-OH Street, new
street lumped
pummel-bits red, rain-slick
slicker-covered, hidin’
in the trees, the
stanchions, stanchions
holding
holding up the “New Steinbergs Soon
To Be Built Here”
sign never was, was
us
board, by board, stanchion-built
dream
platform

38th and Bellechasse, good
hunt to
new street, hangin’off
leady-edge, tar-paper, three floors
roof
summer-struck

gangly time, cruisin’ the golf
course, cruisin’
for balls, Dunlop green
spot, black spot, Slazenger
whatever, drive
320 yards and yards of green,
cleanin’
the golf balls in the soapy
water—you turned a handle

quawta mista?

give you 10 cents boy!

how we change and change.

BRING OUT
your dead, your
dead, your
dead from Fenian
fort and hill Billy

flesh-weals from
‘ware torn

down in the mossy woods, from
street to street, my street
your street, our
street, their
there street

IV

Spring Vale Hill Holly Heights once
Church
Street but developed country
club, Church
moved on
a truck, graves more
truck to truck, trucked to the 93rd
from last
restin’ place

down in the mossy woods, what
woods, where woods, bring out

the dead

out of the closet, the cupboard,
the woods; where?
wend-mother cries

***********************

Station Road the last,
the last time ever,
ever I saw your goneface red
road-down face, where?
wend-mother
cries

are the dead, the mossy
dead

the sudden-start
eyes-open mossy
faces of Fenian
fort and hill
Billy
country club, too, three
hundred and 20 yards and yards
of green, green
spot

quawta mista?

give you 10 cents, boy!

how we change and change
in the mossy heart places
no
change in the sudden-start,
eyes-open
mossy faces

V

BRING OUT THE YET TO BE
dead young
for the gun, young for it just
cruisin’ young
guns
your street, my
street, Station Street

the fourth station

‘A young man alights, a girl in a
thin
straw hat, blue
ribbon-woundied and woundied tight
around tassels
hangin’
runs to give a kiss’

the fourth station, mossy
not yet
to grow
old from the stain of it

WHAT DEAD, WHERE BRING
from hill
Billy and Fenian
fort
wend-woman asks strangers

haven’t a clue atall atall
thorns now in the moss

==end of first movement==

2.

The mossy spaces, places
in the heart

. . . like givin’ birth in the woods alone

Marlin is sayin’ this to splain to Bob there’s gotta be a witness
a witness but thinks
you give birth in the woods alone, you’re
not alone never
alone these
fecund places now two
upsprung from the mossy places

Streets can change their state, mu-
tate and progenate where
once passeth a brigade appears
a parade, a
boulevard where movie
stars and men
from bars ride
open-top cars under the stars to the close
embrace of a cul-de-sac, a
chase, a
ride, away crescent, park, road, amble, walk

can change and change
utterly rue

and wither or prevail, the
nub of tribal tales treachery
undone
by our boys from
our street, the
tin flutes bleat and
Lambeg’s bloody-knuckle-making skinsong
greets
the rising sun of a summer

street can become
place and to know
one’s place is street-
wise, the dead
know their place the bones
of extinct tarblack
pipesewers
echo the wages of sin
is death in the mossy dark
rain summer street the bleat of tin
flute
piercing the villein keen

-30-

(I wrote this when sojourning in Northern Ireland (Norn Iron as it’s pronounced locally) as a writer-in-exile – I had my house blown up in 93 but it was nothing personal – a Semtex-H bomb turns six foot sash windows into a fine frost which covers every inch of the carpet—nothing bigger than a micron—we huddled in little groups on the street all night chatting while the army strung tapes around and poked through the houses – I still had a half bottle of John Powers Three Swallows Irish in the house so I knew I had something to look forward to)