The scent from his final bottle of cologne
Rises between the bars of an outdoor drain;
Rises and clings to the side of the house
He so loved to paint,
Every sweltering summer.

Dzia-dzia,
Short for Dziadek,
Polish for Grandfather.
Giant, hairy hands,
Hiding a lolly or a packet of sherbet,
Lead me home from primary school.
We were probably closest then,
Uncomplicated by language.

Now, I can see his stocky, stooping frame –
Furrowed brow and kindly face –
For the shell it was,
And fill it:
Monte Cassino,
Pulling civilian bodies from the rubble of the abbey.
Later, another monastery,
Isolated; no roof to sleep under,
No medical care, no food,
Just the night-time sobs and choking screams of once-fellow prisoners.

Dzia-dzia,
Mój Dzia-dzia.
As vapours leave their mark upon towering walls,
Too late one of us found the words
To create you for me.

Meet me under the viaduct;
Force a path through choking weeds,
And find the hole we made in the rusty fence.
But don’t fall into the river;
Don’t get lost in the dark.

Meet me at the place your parents met,
Before that pyramid of glass rose over the city
Like a hypodermic needle.
The place where your father and mother would steal for a kiss,
And maybe an untutored fumble.

What makes you think of the past
Makes you fear for the future.
That now, gaudy hands,
Radioactive in the neon night-light,
Tense as they press against tattooed arches;

Finger secret buttons: T-shirts, jeans;
Close around goose-pimpled flesh,
And pull ever closer till fevered gasps collide
With pieces of crumbled brick; broken fence; surrendered,
Poisonous washing machines and, fittingly, dead romance.

Waste chutes like
plastic centipedes
hang as vines from floors
stripped of most their walls,
scaffolding creeps up like
ants subduing a spired
caterpillar, but this creature
is a husk of iron and bricks.
The guts are stripped out and
piled high in skips,
being prepared not for mummification
but a new infestation of
society.

It is an enema of
reconstruction, a menstrual
gestation that lasts a generation,
the lining and protective
chrysalis of a growth time being cast off.
And here we see fronds of flayed wallpaper
and it’s flesh bed of plaster,
mattresses still made up with sheets
and stacks of worn floorboards,
ready to be torn into a mulch
of memory and entropy,
never to be sifted or catalogued,
but to be removed elsewhere and evenly spread,
human silt.

With its long metal legs, bolted to original 50s Formica, it stands, hands on hips, waiting for the next person to stub their toe. The cream plastic top is faded from the kitchen windows and yellowed from hot kettles and glazed bricks heated on the old gas cooker. Countless morning headlines from newspapers have lain at one end whilst countless culinary delicacies have been made at the other.

The plastic there has been worn away with her strong arms rolling pastry for dough. It’s been worn away by top and tailing runner beans fresh from the garden, it’s been worn away by bums leaning and sitting. By my grandmother discussing, arguing, gesticulating, swinging in time to her favourite piece of classical music. It echoes loudly still around the house.

All over, the table is deeply and lightly scarred for life with tiny cuts into its skin. Pommes de terre boulangère, bœuf bourguignon avec petits oignons, chipes faites maison – faites gros à la main, salades fraîches aux légumes du jardin cueillies que ce matin, artichauts à la vapeur avec une sauce vinaigrette à nous faire saliver - saliver - saliver à toute allure.

Look closely and it is possible to make out where the surface has been rubbed away by our hands resting with knives and forks drawn in anticipation. Forced to sit there on summer holidays, my father’s knees knocked cutlery which rattled beneath in a drawer as deep as the table is wide.

Pass la pelle à tarte and you pull and pull the drawer handle as you would your hair whilst explaining to your grandmother why swapping the greens on your plate for the tart she made would be such a good idea. Sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I see it, still, sitting there hot out of the oven, that strawberry tart. Turn to look and it is gone.

My father’s wallet was an item
of deep mystique, even more sacred
than my mother’s purse –
            that object of her’s
I could comprehend coveting,
for the heavy pounds and large
ten pences within.

The brown worn ragged
leather, these signs of his hands :
dark umber stains from years
of hasty breakfasts and workman’s grease;
hands which were nimble and thick,
with their dark valleys of lines
and their still growing grain
of machine and skin oils, flicks
of paint and shedding glue,
sawdust under the fingernails
which where pared down to the quick.
            Those hands held me,
            and I held them, sometimes, a world ago,
now I watch their dashes,
with their wedded-to-hard-work
rings of damage,
whenever I can.

But I could never think of opening
that tomb of ruffled fivers,
with its strips of dirtied paper
peeking out,
and frayed stitching
and rounded corners
and friendly overflowing.

I did not want to have it for
my own, but to have lived and known
so long and old-seeming as he.
And would give anything
to have his warm scarred and
soft calloused hands one day,
rather than my own pair of smooth,
fingers, thumbs and palms.

In tandem with www.toadinmud.co.uk, a new contemporary writing journal, 7pm
Wednesday the 1st November sees the launch of a new weekly open mic poetry
and short-writing event.

Come along to the Queen Margaret Union’s new Lacuna Coffee Bar and see
pieces by the various new and established writers currently working at
Glasgow University. Coffees and more effecting drinks available, the event itself is free.

If you are not a member of either the QMU or the GUU you will need to be
signed in, but don’t worry, we will be signing people in ourselves.

Anyone who has read to an audience will attest to the fact that it is a
totally different, yet complimentary, beast compared to writing. The first event will
see sets by the renowned Liz Lochead as well as students such as Robbie
Guillory, Dominic Burgess and Tom Coles. Come along expecting to be
entertained.

If you wish to read at the event or require more information please contact Thomas
Coles at 0792 635 0161, or toad@toadinmud.co.uk, or just turn up on the night
with something to perform. We want all ages, styles and (self-)perceived
abilities.

I dig hooked fingers
into the sand
that rasps against my skin,
and threatens at any moment
to bend my nails right back.
Drawing my rake fingers
through the grit
I ignore the bite of razor shells,
the scratch of shrimp about my wrists
and the hard weight of corrugated sand
pressing against the soles of my feet.
The harsh whisper of the marsh breeze
tries to tempt me away
with promises of samphire,
lavender and sea pinks,
but instead I live
through my burrowing fingertips,
searching for the rich weight,
that hard, whole rippled shape
of a Stooky Blue the colour of a bruise.
I memorise the feel of it in my hand,
rinse the black sand from it
in the shallow water,
then add it to my bulging jute basmati rice bag.

 There was some confusion about the amount of Latin that had suddenly appeared on the website, a little bit of explanation:

“Lorem Ipsum” is a device used by publishers (both print and internet) to test layouts. It is a useful standard “placeholder text” put in situ allow all attention to be given to elements of design rather than content; to test out word spacing, letter spacing, line spacing and font-sizes without having to write your own junk text each time.

The original un-bastardized text was “On the Ends of Goods and Evils” by Cicero. However the “Lorem Ipsum” is a mangled form of this, and even if I were to understand Latin, I am led to believe that the text used below is incomprehensible:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

The initial section in the Cicero translates as:

“Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

The text (as is used by publishers) has been dated anywhere from the 1500s, to 1960, The reason it appeared on the site is because, as I was designing the layout, I did not yet have any text I wanted to use, so used the Lorem Ipsum as a filler. You may have noticed that as we have added Events, Prose, Podcasts and now this Editorial, the “Events Lorem Ipsum”, “Prose Lorem Ipsum” etc have dissapeared. This is because, as we add content, having filler content becomes redundant.

However the opportunity to write a short editorial was much appreciated.

Find out more about Lorem Ipsum at Wikipedia. From which I have practically plagiarized this post.