chronometers. Played on Resonance FM 15.02.10

Every so often
on an Abbey Road
which kicks across a different street
to resume like an arm either side
of an elbow displaced by a fracture
cast rigid in the pebble-dashed box-hedged suburbs
men’s legs arrest anyway
precisely in the walking position
found on the cover of the Beatles record.
The thing deciphered from physics
is that if all these moments are onion-skinned
bent backwards upon themselves
fastened
fused
worked upon
laid as layers
they will form a broad sausage
ghosting at the edges
and firm in the middle
the slim missives of landing birds will thread through the morass
dogs will form a thickening of average heights
the gaps will all be used up.

However
Trapped out beyond the sausage
in the collecting area for the singular instance
slices must be made,
and therefore
There will be the
waiting
only for the forking
bounded by
hamstring twitches
butting against the
bit below the apex of the inverse V
of split legs
about to form
about to collapse
about to form

It is the gaps
that pool and accumulate
rotating into neat discs
that form a cylinder
that rises between stepped lines

Above this regularly spaced and fronded F-shapes
are picked clean by shallow bowls
or copper-wound lines snaking subterranean
listen in the wind for signals that may still be bouncing
between the earth’s crust and the cloud layer
too weak to form an image

It is the time elapsed in nanoseconds since
weakening against the rimmed crackle
an actual image was encountered


Elsewhere a sandbag is supine
curled to face green chipboard
Its back is wrinkled like a piglet
limbless
headless
but seeding

thick sand blooms and clots on the surface
through far too many tiny holes at once
to form a balanced cone
from a line of softly skittling grain
The blooms and clots are finely divided rock and mineral particles
the rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the reservoir
and the instrument will not freeze.

It is the seepage that can be measured
if not neatly by a gathering in a crucible, ready to invert
with a simple one two three four
nor by the degree of shrivel marked out in gulches in the epidermis
then by the pace in which
the tiny holes are occluded and cleared
appear and disappear
as binary switches

The geology is sprinked loosely against the gravel
and the greyed discs of chewing gum
that have learned to disguise themselves
as well as possible
with the colour of the street
The green chipboard hoarding has eroded from the street surface
to reveal an audience of off-cuts
bottle-tops
and burlap coloured leaves

When the things stay in one place for long enough it is their intention to begin to share colours with each other through the diffusive shift of particles

As the reservoir approaches full drainage
the tiny holes in the sack are also dispersed sequentially
as the strands around them unwind gently
and slough of fibres from the outside in
which pack the seam and bind the other dirt
to become a tracing

Once the holes have been released
it is also the collection of these remaining fibres
in the bottom of a seam in the surrounding concrete

A second measurement of effusion
- the control -
can be taken from the daily observation of the circumference of the size 5 ivory moon
kicked beyond reach into the long grass
behind the fence and
in front of the portacabin

Nitrogen mix is exhaled steadily from the reservoir
which to begin with should be calibrated to 1.1 times the earth's pressure at sea level
The exhale is designed to be regulated by the molecular weight
of the molecules
proceeding in an orderly drip
through the smooth crust marked with
stitched incisions between the 32 regular hexagons and pentagons
of the truncated icosohedron

It is half-lifes of a tidy lung until equilibrium between the air pressures is achieved

From the path the steady green of Astro Turf forms a balanced horizontal line
above the darker soil-patched actual turf
Above the line of Astro Turf sits a painted brick wall
extended by the concomitant
spatial ticking of the slim-lined metal fence
which reveals beyond it
the smallest line of the flat roof
of the sporting facility

the top three lines are merely ornamentation
but special attention is directed
towards the indefinite line
of wars waged between the
turf and astro turf

The turf attempts to move upwards
in a phototropic push
which accidentally colonises the space of imitation
The astro turf retaliates
by dispatching rotating blades
that sever the heads of the vanguard
into a uniform precision

It is the fuzzy tussle of the border
marked in territory gained and lost
between softness and clean lines

There is an ice cream van
backed tightly against the
flat-roofed
brown-bricked
terrace
so that the red tip of the inch-thick bumper
slopes barely beyond the narrow metal strands
of the
loop-topped
white iron fence

There is a bastion of wheelie bins
that rock inward and outward
of the holding spaces created by the fences
in a bi-weekly lapping tide:
disposables and recyclables

It is the line this action makes
breaking against the wide sweeps and returns of the van
to the exact position
broken into subsections:
seasons and weekends

It is also the parallel oscillation
of narrow-coned wafer
diamond-etched
in boxes against the window
and the bouncing of the levels
of bright white whip

A cleanly laid grid of light square paving slabs
forms a smooth plane
barricaded on one side with low slung railings.

Every so often four of the slabs are planned absent in crisp lines
and from the centre of each small square of earth there is a burst of spiky foliage
that is desperate to believe in a tropic
Some are tall and cast parallel shadows that move through the same points once a day

It is the number of times cloud cover is sufficient
to obscure this task