Stirling – Eilidh G Clark

A Scottish Jig

There is so much going on in this photograph and that’s why I took it. It was taken outside the 17th century mansion Bannockburn House. Notice the man in his traditional Scottish dress, the wheelchairs – one neatly placed, one abandoned. Then there is the bike propped under a window beside a 1980’s wire bin.

PROMPT

Using the photograph above, write a short story or poem about arriving late to a party and finding yourself back on 1984. When did you realise and how? Who was there that you haven’t thought about in a long time? How was everyone dressed, what music was playing and what was on the buffet?

Have a ball and happy writing.

Home

Web

Have you ever stepped outside into a cold morning to find that your garden has been spun into a new world of silver threads and pearl droplets? Think about how hard those tiny spiders have worked to create this masterpiece. Look at the photograph above and imagine only one strand of the web. Now imagine that single strand is the first draft of your novel, short story, poem or whichever creative masterpiece you have just finished writing. Now it’s time to build your web. Editing is the job of going around and around, reworking, re-writing, correcting, enhancing, adding and subtracting, developing and enriching. It’s like building a spider’s world.

Dead in a Doorway

The weight of the world smothers you

Like a wet wool blanket

On tired bones.

And you lie there as still as death.

Your eyes; dusted in grime

Follow my reflection along the ground

As my footsteps silence the sound

Of a town laid on its side before you.

A red umbrella flicks to the side

To hide you from a pigtailed child,

While a balding builder wipes pie grease

From his mouth.

I step into your space and listen.

And like a shell pressed upon my ear

All I can hear is the sea and my heart

Beating. Beating because

I’m afraid of you.

I’m afraid if I don’t shake you

Who will wake you?

But I won’t shake you

For fear of hearing you rattle

Like a bag of bones.

I find your cup, drop a coin and say

‘Sorry man.’ Just like the last time

And I wonder,

When the first freeze frosts the leaves

Will you see sparkles

When I see dust.

©EilidhGClark

This poem is dedicated to the man who died in the doorway of the old BHS in Stirling. R.I.P. Never forgotten.

Letting The Outside In

I’m Letting the Outside In.

The double glazing is stained with winter splatter.
Porridge is cooling in a retro bowl and my bare feet –
Baking from the heat of a sun kissed puppy
Who is baking on a vertically striped carpet.

There is a reek of yesterday’s shenanigans at the burn
Wafting from tartan collars
and the air feels.

Music ripples through my rib cage

There’s washing hanging, half-arsed, on radiators
While a new load spins in the machine.
The sagging rope in the back garden
Is empty. Waiting for the weight of winter warmers

Honestly soaked,
to be nipped with plastic tipped pegs and a satisfying sigh.
I’m letting the outside in.

Three squirrels scurry along the naked trees across the way.
And me
I’m resisting the need to weed the garden
I’m letting the outside in.

©EilidhGClark

The above photograph is my oldest dog Mille, she is a 6 year old chocolate lab.

I published this poem with Anti-Heroin Chic on 25th May 2017.

Deadline

Time is running like the River Forth

and it is flowing down my spine.

Big Ben is printed on the back of my eyelids

And my heart is beating

Tick, tick, tick, tock.

Time is painted in the Stirling sky

and is burning holes

into the big fat orange moon, beating on me,

Beating like my pulse

Tick, tick, tick, tock

Time is flapping in the wind

And punching kisses on my chest.

White breath coughs from behind my teeth,

Chattering like supermarket baskets.

Tick, tick, tick, clatter.

Time is waiting on the bus,

Its holding a student pass outright

and the driver is checking his watch, shaking his head

Like a pendulum

Tick, tick, tick, bong

Time is passing by the window,

In the old ladies rain mate,

and it’s trapped in the spokes of an inside out brolly

and it’s pouring

Drip, tick, tock, drip

Time has landing on my face

From a charcoal dusk and

Airborne tear shapes that slap my skin

and roll

Tick, tick, drip, drip onto my essay.

Published in Brig Newspaper – University of Stirling

©Eilidh G Clark

Tip Toe

“Good Evening”

burst into the empty room and sinks

into wood-chipped walls.

I am thrilled

There isn’t a cushion of place,

Or a dirty plate,

or a dish cloth dotted with swollen toast crumbs, no.

There is just me, alone in clean silence.

I tiptoe on my tea stained carpet and hold my breath

in case the robin in the back garden stops singing.

Or the train on the railway track 400 yards away slows.

In my little cupboard sized kitchen

the kettle rocks on its silver disc,

and the fridge performs its hourly shudder.

And the walls sweat.

I put last nights dinner in the ding – chicken supreme and second day roast potatoes,

better reheated, yes, better.

I scroll through Facebook,

watch people talking to one another

without opening their mouths.

I turn off my phone – to feel.

I feel everything.

Maybe I should do something?

Maybe I should clean my plate,

eat a jammy Wagon Wheel just because –

Maybe feel a little guilty so practice Yoga on the Wii?

Maybe just sit and watch the robin in the tree.

©Eilidh G Clark

The Lesson

Our heaving lungs suck the air as we climb.

Higher, higher.

Aching legs and numb feet scramble over boulders and broken branches.

Rain, wind, and a glimmer of sun. A distant mist descending

from the sullen sky onto the earth, erasing a castle, a monument

a city.

Leaves shake violently in the cutting wind. Noise.

Squelching mud, snapping twigs,

unnatural sound, we create it.

On the cliff top, the landscape is our canvas.

Acorns and chestnuts, branches and stones, litter the floor

like a countryside collage hung on a classroom wall. Winters decay.

Carcasses of cream coloured leaves, consumed by insects, lie randomly

forming delicate lace arrangements.

Brown mud, brown leaves, brown bark, paint the backdrop

of a multi coloured woodland.

Green moss on a broken wall,

orange, yellow and grey foliage A tiny shoot, pushes through the earth.

Layers of life on death, death on life. The liberty of nature.

Nature is shrinking, the colours rinsed out by

buildings, roads, litter, wire fences

hemming in the farmers cows

hemming in history.

Humanity’s smell is pungent,

food and people

people and food.

Through the wind, a distant drilling is heard.

Scroll

It is midnight.
And the stroke of its hand is a memory;
A memory of
a hand that once held mine.
I am entangled in darkness

The hiss of a serpent wraps around
my throat,
until my nicotine breath bellows
And drops.

Amongst the shadows,
Optimism shines like a ghost
from an invisible moon.

I am calm.

Déjà vu haunts me
and I realise my footsteps

may have, walked this place before when I was young.

And my future.

You made me. You

and a bald headed man
who is and is not my father.
You gave me this midnight, and you are gone.
Sadness lives in me like tumour
but sadness pays.

Soon

I will hold a scroll to say
Be proud mum, I did it.

Wheelie Bin Soup

This poem was published in the UOS Creative Writing anthology yearbook. It also appeared in an exhibition titled Poetry in Windows at the 2019 BIG LIT festival at Gatehouse on Fleet

green trash bin on green grass field — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Nicked, frae below a strummin street licht,

The muckle great bin schrinks low to the grund.

Flashes of blue and orange snap

on its rusty armour. Half foo

it rumbles tae the fit o Randolf crescent where

the pavement sinks beneath brae, bumpin

ower boulders ,beer cans and deed bracken. Joyriding.

It flips its lid to the moon.

And the moon slides behind a bramble

Bush, and the bush slips behind a tree that

sucks air from the shadows . Released.

Skirting the embankment, teeterin. Then nose-diving heed first,

puking a cocktails o last week’s cardboard shite

into the Bannock burn. Branded confetti drookit,

Dance around the plastic shell celebrating

a liquid grave.

Lentil Soup

Beads of soup-sweat cling

To my arm hair as I hack a hulk of turnip. Slabs of flesh,

sculpted into yellow dice, tumble

onto a hummock of carrots. Resting

On the surface of a simmering pot, a sliced leek splays,

Its silver loops belch hoops of pungent fog.

My window is crying.

The pot hisses and pirouetting lentils rise to the surface and tumble,

Dragging sodden leek down into the rolling stock.

Fists of steam punch the air,

Burst

Then creep and crawl

Around the walls like silver ghosts. Waving.

I wipe my brow on a dishcloth; toss the root vegetables into the pot

Then open the window,

The smell of autumn drifts outside.

Tag: Stirling

A Scottish Jig

PROMPT

Web

Letting The Outside In

The above photograph is my oldest dog Mille, she is a 6 year old chocolate lab.

I published this poem with Anti-Heroin Chic on 25th May 2017.

Deadline

Tip Toe

The Lesson

Scroll

Wheelie Bin Soup

This poem was published in the UOS Creative Writing anthology yearbook. It also appeared in an exhibition titled Poetry in Windows at the 2019 BIG LIT festival at Gatehouse on Fleet

Lentil Soup

This poem is published in the Tin Lunchbox mini-mag

PROMPT

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This poem is dedicated to the man who died in the doorway of the old BHS in Stirling. R.I.P. Never forgotten.

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The above photograph is my oldest dog Mille, she is a 6 year old chocolate lab.

I published this poem with Anti-Heroin Chic on 25th May 2017.

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This poem was published in the UOS Creative Writing anthology yearbook. It also appeared in an exhibition titled Poetry in Windows at the 2019 BIG LIT festival at Gatehouse on Fleet

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This poem is published in the Tin Lunchbox mini-mag

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