{"id":1076,"date":"2007-10-05T13:45:54","date_gmt":"2007-10-05T13:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2007-10-05T13:45:54","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T13:45:54","slug":"mark-leech-goes-base-jumping-and-has-the-dereliction-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/mark-leech-goes-base-jumping-and-has-the-dereliction-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Leech goes base jumping and has the dereliction blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Base Jumper Prevaricates<\/span>

\n<\/span>

\n

\nGlistening pods of life<\/span>

\nmoving on roads like piss<\/span>

\nriddling sunrise:<\/span>

\n<\/span>

\nI dare earth's concrete palm<\/span>

\nto swat me, falling.<\/span>

\n<\/span>

\nI will surge up,<\/span>

\nhurling fat slugs of down<\/span>

\nback at God's eye.<\/span>

\n<\/span>
Now the shell is smashed, and I<\/span>

\nam the first drop out.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Improvements<\/span><\/span>

<\/span>I got the nostalgia for dereliction blues<\/span>
                                                   …Ed Pope<\/span>

 <\/span>
The city was much as we had left it,<\/span>
still full of brightly coloured delicacies<\/span>
and old, tall houses, whose gloom<\/span>
increased with the distance.<\/span>
It was the roads that had changed,<\/span>
sticky with new tops and distinguished<\/span>
only by painted guide lines.<\/span>
We were soon lost, looking<\/span>
for the postbox with the narrow mouth,<\/span>
the fence strangling among dock leaves.<\/span>
Healed, rippling under our feet like muscles<\/span>
the roads unfurled, and the city<\/span>
skated on them, its dishes<\/span>
gracefully raised for presentation<\/span>
and assessment.<\/span>

                           We learned to sleepwalk,<\/span>
call on friends in odd languages;<\/span>
we dreamed the city lights<\/span>
floating under us, flares<\/span>
held just out of water. Sometimes<\/span>
we stumbled over daylight and<\/span>
from a bar, the ice melting,<\/span>
watched new roads seep along the walls<\/span>
of buildings under restoration.<\/span>
The city shone like a pebble we'd stoop for<\/span>
on a hot afternoon, at the foot<\/span>
of an empire's last milestone.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Mark Leech does not base jump but has a pamphlet coming out \u2013 London Water \u2013 from Flarestack Publishing quite soon. He lives in Oxford. www.myspace.com\/markleechpoetry<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark adds… “Ed Pope is a singer\/songwriter\/poet\/performance artist based in Oxford. He's a fixture on the alternative<\/span> (he wouldn't approve of me calling it that) scene, and the song I took the line from mourns the gentrification of all the crumbling buildings in the city and suburbs.”
<\/span><\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Base Jumper Prevaricates Glistening pods of life moving on roads like piss riddling sunrise: I dare earth's concrete palm to swat me, falling. I will surge up, hurling fat slugs of down back at God's eye. Now the shell is smashed, and I am the first drop out. ImprovementsI got the nostalgia for dereliction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}