Black Highway

This is the poem I wrote for the 'Black Highway' pamphlet...

Branches and leaves slowly disappear

Only to return

Petrified

In concrete and steel

I stand beneath the motorway again

The forlorn noise of this place where I was born

six floors up

in the long demolished tower block

not five minutes from here

I think about the big, black shapes

formless and terrifying

the motorway at night, 

I have passed into and through those spaces

alone,

all my life

I am a painter now.

The motorway incites different conjured feelings in me

The powerful and exciting drag

Large brushes in wet paint on canvas

The possibilities for new expression

in this work I have chosen. 

In the day I make drawings

hidden from view under flake white skies. 

I set up my easel and paint quickly

against the cold surface

my only witnesses are curious horses that graze

in swampy fields of electric pylons

dilapidated shelters of corrugated metal, oil drums and wire.

I return at night to make drawings from the car

I walk the lanes beneath the motorway

again

this feels crazy and dangerous

I return with a friend and a camera

and leave with views seen through a lens

that mingle and mix with

my memories that I fail to confide

in the breath of the cold air

 

In the studio

I excavate images out of charcoal surfaces

with blackened fingers and nails

In oil I lay in big shapes with big brushes

Oily rags collect on the black floor

My hands

that I can never really clean

are now aged, lined and warped

the years of dirty turpentine and sharp staples

Endless canvas stretched over endless wood

Endlessly

There is agitation and tension

In the edges of shapes that meet and collide

But there is a soothing recognition

of the familiar view

and remembrances that tell me

I am here again.

A lifetime of experiences

some numb and shrouded,

weird nightmares and vivid silences

They occupy my studio and fix themselves

in the oil paint and linseed oil and the canvas

The studio door finally opens

He steps into the moonlight

and disappears with a silent shudder

Into the garden

‘Fare thee well, my old friend, fare thee well’