Ben Hubert
- I’ve Started Eating Apples
- Plinthos.
- Grandad.
- Out-of-Body
Prints
About
Though it’s where you grew up
Pollen rushes around you
Rubbing your shine to clouds
Still the Sun keeps working
A god who heats your gut
You feel your insides turning
Look up at your mother
Her hands are full and you fell down
Despite her love you’re on the ground
Soon it’ll eat you up
I was here when the sky was a dark blue, heavy. As if it were about to fall.
It fell to the ground and saturated the leaves and grass around me.
The head of a man is watching, and I watch the pigeon through the one-way window.
Occassional contact breaks the wall and skin bursts into colour
Do you taste like coffee? You are a similar tone to the fired clay I drink from.
Slow moving time is cherished.
A vantage point and hideaway.
Family visits always until they’re gone.
New meaning in the quiet adults of the other room.
Bikes give freedom.
Driving licenses mark a change.
I waited in the car for what felt like hours in the doctor’s surgery car park.
The long drive to buy groceries.
Punctures were repaired.
Maddie was always there.
I remember her as a puppy.
I remember the horses.
I remember the three siblings before me.
I sit in the armchair with a book whilst ants pass by either side of me. Their journey is up one leg and back down the other, from front leg to back leg and back leg to front. I wondered if they are journeying to me, they are not. Just to the opposite ended leg chair, they pay me no mind.
The ants are gone and replaced with flickering shadows. To my left is a haze of flashing light, it feels too bright for my pupils but that fact feels quite insignificant now.
A deer in headlights.
Focus on ignition.
A ball of warmth against my neck.
I think someone is tapping my shoulder for help. No matter if I turn or not, the moment has passed.
I can hear but not see grasshoppers and buzzards or kites. Their varied distance from my ears makes their bodies the same size in my mind. It’s as if the ants are mimicking them, trying to confuse me. Like they don’t want me to notice them. My presence, whilst calm, may be worrying to them. I won’t hurt you!
The cast of the mottled sun.
A buzzard and a kite called out in the distance, but from where I am they were only as loud as the crickets and grasshoppers.
I don’t feel like dancing.
The garden needs watering.
Hose water pats against a closed poppy. Out of rhythm, a ball bounces against the concrete driveway.
The hosepipe snakes around his forearm.
A stone fountain until you blink.
The poor dog pants in the humidity.
My spine is bound, the wicked witch holds my hips.
Interpret some movement, there’s cement on my lips.
Destruction of everything, weighed up by ground bricks.
I’ll rebuild in time when my nails have been clipped.
Fresh covers on my bare legs, I haven’t felt this in a while. I feel like a cut of meat wrapped in tinfoil. There’s one in the oven. Shit adverts flash in the corner but the flames are worth it. Foil wrapped legs are calling so I must go, to take them out of the flames of their own.
I need a car for logistical reasons.
I feel my face and know.
The weather is hot and swimming trunks deter any worry of wet clothes.
The square is a triangle and a small coffee gives the best vantage point.
Watch people outside the pub.
Drivers trying to park cars too big for them. Many are electric, which is nice because people’s chatter, whilst quiet, is the loudest thing in the area.
I’m happy.
Two women speaking behind me. One explains that there is a train station which is a ten minute walk from here. You will only find beer.
I know somewhere in myself what I want to share.
The last decade is now in my conscious recollection.
I’ve started eating apples.
Before I left, the pergola stood with sapling roses at its foundation. Morning sunlight would be enjoyed, though harsh and overpowering. Sunglasses and squinting.
I’ve returned, and the pergola is atop with thick rose bush. The dappled sunlight it creates is both beautiful and calm.
My eyes have the chance to wander and I see a whole world aroud me that I never knew
In the summer there is a constant sound. Its creator varies; sometimes crickets or grasshoppers, sometimes pigeons, often honey bees and bumblebees. In the evening, even on a hot sunny day like today, there is a smell of damp foliage and soil. The air is pleasantly cool.
An older perspective of how my life was as a child.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
A sign of good luck.
Trees, who’s branches have been cut? Stumps from which new branches grow. Upon which leaves may grow.
The plant is growing through the chair.
Pockets of sunlight create a frame of shadow.
Pumpkin. Plateau. Betfred.
Bus air-vents.
Looking for the bright thing,
Taken to the sky.
I feel the Sun’s blinding
Presence as I fly.
Versions of myself before,
A hundred miles behind.
Burdened with the moving forth
There’s bright things still to find
We time travelled back then
Moving between countryside and city
I’m at the foot of an orchard
If god made the apple trees
Propellor plane above me, once you titled wings and waved
Look up at the bulb and see its islands.
A blooming garden and somewhat lucious grass.
The dog killed some areas with her paws.
A firework is about to go off. The process happens in slow motion, like a cathartic octopus. Green tendrils are leaning out from its centre in all directions. A friendly firework, it caresses the hair on my forearm, enough to realise and enough to tickle. You could be poisenous but you don’t look it. You’re more like a firework. You might explode though. I’ve looked away for just a moment and witnessed an explosion upon my dog’s nose. She whimpered and retreated from such sharp pain. Everything is a firework here and they are in constant expansion.
I dreamt about the van last night.
I never expected the back windows to turn to oak.
The washing line is not a line, it is a little 5G tower.
In another tongue I hear that it’s you.
Up tall stands the stag - ceramic and still.
My hand holds a flame by my reflection.
The smell of these lillies reminds...
Archie’s grown up, he’s defrosting chicken breast.
We were all at the pub last night
won’t be long before another visit.
Victoria.
The sunflower looks like an ancient vine. It fell into the fence, looks like it might be peeping it’s head through to see what’s on the other side.
It’s 23 degrees and so windy.
A dismembered mouse lies behind the deck chair with a wasp in its stomach.
Away, a picked petal, dead to the air.
The weather is wonderful.
A blue sky and bright sun
Our skin is warm to the touch
It is a good good day!
Ben’s special day
Thanks for the wonderful weather
North, east, south and west were indefinitely flat.
There are invisible ribbons flying through the air like snakes without heads, no eyes to guide them. Some make it through the valley around me unscathed. Some become entangled with fireworks or my own body. When their momentum dwindles, they disappear entirely and become a weightless nothing.
I’m beginning to truly see the world.