Unordered Tales
By ralph
- 3068 reads
31 Songs by Nick Hornby
I once very briefly met the writer Nick Hornby and I mean briefly in every sense of the word. Our eyed exchange lasted seven seconds exactly and all...
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- 2221 reads
36. My name is Christopher and I am an addict 2003. (A chapter from the novel. The Radio Rooms
What I want to do here this evening is tell you my story.
A Bed Unmade (for Ruth)
A bed unmade as if robbed of order. We stand in the hallway jacketed and keyed itching to scratch once more. Out in the street we take hands and...
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- 1612 reads
A Flaked Frame
A flaked, muddy window a view of aerial wired rooftops that I cannot afford to frame anymore. Sheet lightning phrases the sky and thunder applauses...
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- 1575 reads
A Question Corcerning Daphne
Hour by the hour, she’d work. Front garden to back, kerb to drain. Again then again.
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- 1470 reads
A Southside Serenade
And so, it's all gone Southside, after all these years. The place where I strained crystal tears. In truth, I've despised these barrios, they froze...
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- 1508 reads
A Zoo Season
The little films now are the most haunting insignificant routines taken for granted over the years through the seasons we blew hot and cold...
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- 1604 reads
Addiction Diary Number 1
Great meeting tonight. Feel like I'm getting back on track. In truth I have let my guard slip big time of late. Taking my recovery for granted, thought that I was the man, thought that I was whiter than white.
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- 1616 reads
Advice For When You Go
The horn is for mercy, that receiver’s for the news. A mattress for all your Rosie’s, and the dough for those ‘die for’ shoes.
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- 618 reads
After Hutton
A folded one shot Romeo as they throw him on the slab all buffed up with brilliantine combed tightly before the dance and no one really knew his name...
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- 1528 reads
Appetite
So it's just the pills and me. Guy Clarke, Prefab Sprout. Silk Cut. The rain scratching windows, of a Saturday night. I could pick up the phone. Talk to a friend. In LA. Basildon. Wakefield.
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- 1392 reads
Arpeggio
We are lost satellites. Orbiting cul de sacs. No stars here. Black holes. We are bad maths. Dylexic algebra. Not adding up. Lost love letters. We are broken radios. We are scratched records.
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- 1243 reads
Ballad of the Broken Strings
Jackie and Jane dug Joni Mitchell at the Coffee Cup Cafe in New York they promised each other they'd write songs together in the days before before...
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- 1690 reads
Blow
Room scattered with the things that every days are made of rotting food from days ago stale curls of crisps her body is a centrepiece its skin iced, diced, puffed the blood needles high five her sleep
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- 1296 reads
Blue Afternoon In Bethnal Green
He loped around Bethnal Green. The fragrance of Scorsese's New York, still clinging to his overcoat. A fading comfort like Frank Sinatra. The gangsters here had no style. Just ill fitting Nike and bad teeth.
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- 1508 reads
Bournemouth. Two Weeks Before Christmas
The wind wraps me. Into you. And I can stand this now. For I am swept again. This isn't melancholy's jetsam, crashing a wave, hunting a riptide. I will not drown again. Am I clear on that?
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- 1222 reads
Brushed
The little films now, are the most monochrome. Significant routines. taken for granted. Over two years, and through the seasons. We blew hot and cold. Underpinned by reassurance. The goodnight kisses,
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- 1275 reads
Bug
You have toyed with me, like an insect. Pulled off my arms, and my legs. A sick and ill boy. Has been let down. Crushed! A bug to your ground. How does it feel? To make me want to die. Does it cross your view?
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- 1388 reads
Chemistry
On reflection I shouldn’t have mentioned that tattoo, on your neck.
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- 688 reads
Clacton Beach Memoir
'I'll slice your face so that they can play noughts and crosses on it.'
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- 877 reads
Co-Op Live Art Fiasco
Stick the empty bottle up my bum.
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- 1320 reads
Coffee and Eggs
Hey baby, Lets meet for breakfast. In the sunshine. Put it all to bed. For this last time. I'll buy you coffee and eggs. You can smoke my fags. For the first time. Bring my bags. I have a joke to tell.
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- 1419 reads
Compass
I find you in the library scribbling on rough paper your sad map of the world I snatch your pen draw a heart on your shirt you recoil a loaded biro...
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- 1453 reads
Day Fade
Brains of a rocking horse leads you to a petrol tank drinking in the bad day with a trash can horizon hue You can murmur your life for a dollar quart...
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- 1488 reads
In San Francisco
As I walk the bridge the sun setting turning Alcatraz orange this city is a beehive buzzed up stinging itself crawling through the Mission finding...
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- 1438 reads
KIngsway Cafe, Ossett. For Ian Dury
Sweet tea innocents.
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- 1023 reads
Life in Rosy Hues
You start to sing ‘La Vie en rose’.
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- 1206 reads
Lithium Rose
sometimes i lose patience drink a bit too much sniff cocaine and fall asleep with her memory
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- 1815 reads
Middle England
A town like Billericay, in Essex. A March Saturday night. A little bistro that serves pasta dishes to Gladys and Brian. She is twin set nostalgia; he is slacks and Argyle fantasies.
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- 1232 reads
Night on Shaw Road
The little girl. She's telling me jokes, from her new, shiny book. Some we get, and some we don't. We laugh on the sofa. Demolish a packet of crisps. You are in the kitchen. On the phone,
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- 1107 reads
Olympia
London’s curtains twitch. Mondays itch.
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- 573 reads
The Fan with the License: Growing Up Competition Entry
We argued so much that one of us had to be punched. I wish I could call him now and laugh about it all. I can’t do that because Andy Otley is dead.
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- 1427 reads
The Only Way Is Essex
Outside a lighted house, in a road, in a town she should never be in. A Bacardi breezed girl with Winehouse hair, lifts her skirt for a line of coke.
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- 2493 reads
Waterloo Sunset. Part Two
A police car and a screaming siren. The music for the last couple.
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- 966 reads
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GEOFF CAPES: AN URGENT REQUEST FROM BBC NEWSNIGHT
In 1976, as a twelve-year-old boy, I went on a school trip to see the Olympic Trials at Crystal Palace, London.
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- 673 reads
Poem for John Hegley
'John. John! I drum the Cajon. Sometimes it’s in rhythm. Other times it isn’t…’
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- 507 reads