Poem
John McCullough
NIGHT WRITING
NIGHT WRITING
NIGHT WRITING
In humid months, at the estate’s unwatched edgethe boys hook up for an after-hours cigarette
before trashing field gates. Dazzle of white Reeboks, bling,
practised geezer-laughs rev-revving
with the engines of graffiti tagged bangers.
Customised stereos thump out this week’s garage,
the race kicking off in a blizzard of chalk dust,
a bouncing charge up the crumbling, fossil-built rise.
Death and dew ponds can’t stop them while they swerve
past quivering teasel, conquer the bone ridge’s turn,
skeins of wool lifting from gorse as banners
for the night’s whooping, fist-raising winners.
Further off, the crews unite for a slow drift, melt into hills
but leave the empty sky with headlamp trails:
blazing ghosts still performing their necessary work,
still scribbling their names on the dark.
© 2008, John McCullough
From: the lives of ghosts
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
From: the lives of ghosts
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
John McCullough
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1978)
John McCullough was born in Watford in 1978 and grew up there during the eighties and nineties. He studied English and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia before completing an MA in Sexual Dissidence at the University of Sussex, followed by a PhD on Shakespeare and friendship. He still teaches creative writing there now, in addition to similar work at the Open University. His ...
Poems
Poems of John McCullough
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NIGHT WRITING
In humid months, at the estate’s unwatched edgethe boys hook up for an after-hours cigarette
before trashing field gates. Dazzle of white Reeboks, bling,
practised geezer-laughs rev-revving
with the engines of graffiti tagged bangers.
Customised stereos thump out this week’s garage,
the race kicking off in a blizzard of chalk dust,
a bouncing charge up the crumbling, fossil-built rise.
Death and dew ponds can’t stop them while they swerve
past quivering teasel, conquer the bone ridge’s turn,
skeins of wool lifting from gorse as banners
for the night’s whooping, fist-raising winners.
Further off, the crews unite for a slow drift, melt into hills
but leave the empty sky with headlamp trails:
blazing ghosts still performing their necessary work,
still scribbling their names on the dark.
From: the lives of ghosts
NIGHT WRITING
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