Neil Fulwood- Three Poems

House

The lock broken and the gates
off their hinges. The driveway 
curving up to the house, gravel
clattering under the wheel arches.

The garden snag-wreathed 
in vines and nettles. Scuffed
shoes and lacerated ankles
your reward for quitting the car.

The house abraded by time
and weather. Broken roof tiles,
guttering clogged. Silence; 
memories you’ve suppressed.

Suddenly the face at the window.

Persistence 

 

Roots snarl the ground,

stones work themselves

into your shoes. Puddles

are filmed with scuzz

and find your feet unerringly.

 

The woodland tells you:

go back, go home.

 

Branches put their mark on you,

efficiently as paper cuts.

A slap from a wet leaf

chastises you for not listening.

 

The woodland tells you:

turn round, go home.

 

It is late in the day. Distance

is merely a concept now. 

Rogue

 

It’s not writers block any more

than the wrong turn en route

to the building site is trucker’s block,

or the blown fuse and mild shock

 

is electrician’s block; it’s no more

an inability to do the job

than a product turning out a crock

of shit is quality assessor’s block.

 

It’s more like a thief in the night,

a sprite with stretchy arms

stealing your tools and material,

tinkering with your capacity to spell,

 

disrupting punctuation,

corrupting coherence,

making gibberish of grammar,

slaughtering syntax, taking a hammer

 

to what you want to express

and your way with words.

It isn’t a block: a block’s a halt.

This is a glitch, a bug, a fault,

 

a piece of code that’s rogue,

a saboteur that wreaks havoc

and disappears; gets away clean:

a Trojan, a ghost in the machine.