Click titles below to view extracts from recent work:

>> Collapsing Colonies - A poem by Kenneth Emson
>> The Building - Extract
>> Crossing a border - Extract
>> Original Music Composed by Owen Frost

Collapsing Colonies

In the porous eye of a bee,
White petals from a field of poppies gleam
Like a beam
from a lighthouse
Or verse from siren,
Abstaining in principle,
This abstraction of black and yellow
Cowardice and despair.
This abjection from form.
Fertilisation and agriculture

The pollen dies
And dries.
For the bees leave
For the bees know
And the world slows.
As a seed hangs in the air,
Empty of static,
To populate but the melancholic breeze
In a windless world
With the smiling bees
Abstaining in politic
Of a horror they see.

And in the porous eye of a bee
Whose sting is in their stall,
A tear forms
As comb tears from comb
And home tears from home.
And for the world a dystrophic sun,
Glaring at an empty crop
Deserving in its lack.

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The Building.

I remember first seeing it when I was maybe 4 years old. I had probably seen it before that - but it had never registered as a building to me. It was big - tall and round. Like a cola can. It was was actually a sort of light blue/green colour but always seemed beige to me and it didn't seem to come from anywhere - not that I could see anyway.

It was a symbol of the place I grew up - a bit tall round symbol. Apparently when it was conceived it would have a revolving restaurant - a cinema - a high level glass atrium
and a giant flame on top. However when they built it they thought - fuck that - who wants this stuff - lets just build a big concrete cylinder. Everyone will love it.

I think it was offices then. I can't have been anything else. It certainly wasn't lived in. Everything about it was bland. Inoffensive. As I grew up - it changed very little - but at the same time it changed a lot. The reason it changed is because my attitude towards it changed.

It move from something that in the first place I didn't, really notice to something that was there but not really meaning anything to something I hated.

This big round, column like building was the symbol of my city. Something that was supposed to evoke pride. Like St Paul's Cathedral for London, Edinburgh Castle for Edinburgh or Faces Nightclub for Essex. This big bland 60's edifice of nothing was what symbolised Birmingham. At 81 meters tall you could see it quite easily - and I hated it. Despised it. It wasn't ugly - it was just so inoffensive it was pointless.

The companies moved out of the Rotunda in the early mid 90's and it stood there - empty and boring. The city around it was regenerating New St was being smartened up - the Bull Ring was beginning to be thought about as an area of transformation and yet the Rotunda stood as it had always done - like a stack of grubby pound coins - getting dirtier and more pointless.

It was then that it became Grade 2 listed.

All I had ever thought really was that this building should be bulldozed and then they went and listed the fucker.

Just opposite the Rotunda - they built a brand new Watersones - all glass elevators and ambient lighting - which was fine - only there was already another waterstones further down New st in an cavernous old masonic building - inside there was beautiful.
It was a sprawling library/shop - with corners to sit in - little dark and cosy anterooms and grand staircases. I liked the new waterstones. It is better than any of the ones they have in London - but the old waterstones really had a soul about it. It wasn't the sort of place where any old bastard could go in and buy a book - when you were in there you felt like you were just absorbing knowledge, culture and history - maybe that's why they built a new one. All the stupid fuckers who wanted to buy "being Jordan" may have felt intimidated by this classy bookshop.

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Crossing a border

We cross borders every day. Physical ones and mental ones. Ones with guards and ones that are abandoned but what impact if any do these crossings have.

I suppose I could write about airports and customs and passports and guards with machine guns - but I wont - because it doesn't really mean anything to me. I guess, at the end of the day it all comes down to how much value you place on the word "border" or how much energy you put into that line in the sand. After all - that's what a border is - a line in the sand that people believe so strongly in that they watch it until it becomes sacred. Sacred enough to be guarded. Sacred enough to kill for.

I cross borders every day - the border from Greenwich councils designated borough to Lambeth. It makes no difference to me - all it means is that if I drop litter a different room in a different place has to send someone to clean it up.That border matters to someone - but not really to me. I have many times driven to Scotland. Normally at night. Normally with the rain lashing onto my windscreen and normally crossing the "border" without even knowing it. The first I notice that I am in Scotland is when I hit the sprawling mass of Glasgow - and even then - there is no real change.

A new accent but the same words, maybe a different philosophy on life but not one that I will notice straight away. Scotland is a whole other country - and yet there is no real border - not something that you would kill for any more.

I have never been on a train through Europe and had to show guards my passport to continue my journey like you see in European films. The only guarded borders I have crossed are through airport waiting lounges - from England to international space and from the no man's land of international space to another country - and yet I am still in an airport - a white - air-conditioned saccharine box that means very little. That is the physical border - that is the line in the sand that is so precious - but you only move from one country to the next when you get to the heart of a place. The wilds of Scotland, the tapas bars of Andalusia, the towns and the neighbouring townships of South Africa.

So the borders are meaningless, bureaucratic, military. Maybe this has only happened in the west. Maybe this wasn't always the case. Maybe because I have the luxury of a passport I don't have the aggro at the airport. I don't know. All I can say really is that crossing the border never makes me feel like I have arrived somewhere. It just means I am a little bit closer.

Maybe none of that makes sense. I don't know it makes sense in my head, but trying to describe it is difficult. In fact maybe it makes more sense in my head because that is where a border starts. A border, a line in the sand or on a map first takes shape in someone's head when a person says - this place here is mine and you cant come in unless I say so. Here is my border and I will defend it, it will only work though if this person can convince everyone else that this is the truth. This place really does belong to this person and we should respect it.

So a border is a mutually accepted truth created in the mind, drawn in the sand – but ultimately moveable over time if enough people with enough belief change their mind.

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