• Vol. 05
  • Chapter 06
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Clear the film

Helen Laycock

Baked into the layers of
life,
we are
caught and held
in stripes –
graveyard troughs,
cesspits of the poor,
wealthy smog,
golden belief.

Elevated and windowed
from Lowry crowds,
and noise,
and disease,
our brains are still peopled,
the silence still pocked:

we are bruised weight,
abused,
dragged through despair and
strangled
in strings of stress,
knotted in nets.
We have been gouged
and patched.
Infected.

Confined, we crane;
where is the clean air,
the escape?

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Clear the film

Helen Laycock

They exist beyond prepositions.

We spew hatred.
We swallow hatred.
We light candles for ambience
and burn our world.
We rock
in a cradle of nonchalance
and cry when it tips.

We must clear the film,
rise from the dark architecture,
scarred by the sharp,
and still bleeding.
We must rise
through the pink dilution,
swilled in the watery blood
of morality and emotion.
Rise
to the sharp intake of clarity.

Don’t look down, or you’ll fall.

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