Alistair Noon
The disappearing houses
Disappearing houses are the band’s livelihood:
they gig it with each long swung hit
that perforates weak-link roofs and walls:
less is more. They chip away at the wills
of rock dinosaurs, their muscle breaks
recordings of habitation and labour into albums of bricks
to be parcelled and packed off to market.
Let’s focus: life, the lucky say, is what you make it.
On barebacked trucks, clutching metal sides, they tour from site
to wreckable site where, thin air for seats,
they squat to drum stone in public, and expect no fame
as fee, invisible walls padded with foam
absorb their labour’s decibels, pavements toss few looks.
In interviews the locals blink at their dialect
as they negotiate vegetables for the evening’s wok.
They doss in plastic bivouacs, each morning wake
under covers massed like leaves, on bamboo mats unrolled
on planks, to early taxi horns and treetop trills.
Finally, the gig’s over, buildings bled to foundations,
only the outlines bare to producers’ decisions.
When plans are girder and concrete, there’ll be a plinth
of names, not theirs, in the foyer, and beneath
what will be shadows of the yet to be hauled up tower
they load their pans and bedding, and overnight they vanish, too.
Alistair Noon lives in Berlin. He has had work published in Germany, France, Italy and Russia as well as in the UK.
Page(s) 71
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