Writing Activity - 2.4 ('the stares')
too flat 12
this is a letter from all of us in the close and just to tell you have two do
do the stares but you havnt don the stares and its your turn we all have to take or turns on a friday cos it is getting pure boging also we r also not happy with the noyses that your too boys r making at night when they are slaming and swingeing (and I seen them drunking under age and they r stil at school on the door that shuld be shut becose the warden told us 2 at that meeting that that door that has to keep shut for anemergency but it cannt be left open if theres’ a fire and it will spread threw the hole close and up to your flat aswel and yous lot will be stuck aswell and you will havge truble getting out if the door is broken shut aswell but. Becase we’re sick of your familys noise durin the nite and the mess that your dogs makse with all the barking and the shouting and argments coming from yours to boys who r always fighting and slamming the close door and a have toldyou alredy about what the warden told us about that door and a fire This is your last chance and if you don’t and when r u gone to move the old washingmaschine from out of ma winnow when the counsil man willl come up and takeit away for no a charge but Somebody will tell the housing offiser and yous will be evected like ‘at polis woman and her 3 weans but some of the neighbours r threteaning to smash yous so I am telling u b4 it happen so you r worned.
– singed anonimos
A Lynchingby Hugh O'Donnell
They came – as they often do –
amid sickly and grainy torchlight;
well aware that the world was knowing.
Ski-masked, they burgled
and bundled – a ‘smash and grab’.
Object: unshaven and hollow-
eyed; taunts were spat.
In the darkness
the moral high-ground collapsed
beneath a twisting and flickering
history and truth; vertically taut
and torqued sinews, slowly
and silently relaxed
as did
hidden entrails.
Tortilla’d in white, pickings for the news-
wires – digitised, desktop-downloadable
and executable…
…as the foundlings enacted no encore.
Oceans away,
parental consent competed with
Pimms for lifeless lips.
