a story of straight lines
by Mike Ferguson
Premise
That
beneath
the flawlessness of straight lines
(ploughed and planted and growing
in those forever fields)
there are bodies buried
dead or alive.
Precursors
There are templates:
films mainly, where the
visual creates with
a visceral feel of
lived brutality, then
the adoration of gore
and evil’s allure from
lavish representation.
Extrapolation of the Idea
As illusion: after
excavation / extraction,
the theory of a serial killer is
usurped by the actual illness
and disease.
She says
‘A ruse is a ruse is a ruse’
for those looking to
have a dream screenplay of
their own life before its end.
Press
Stir up the suspicion, the sensation,
the subterfuge and the
sadness – though this passing is a
tragedy gently played out.
Slow-burner / tear-turner,
there are jokes about agricultural
perfection as a rural rites of passage,
all journeying the same way.
Post-Press Planning
Ensemble writing will not work
for a couple, especially when one
has passed. She will ‘remain’ with
she says/she said as, obviously,
clips in the film, a flash-back
to her connivance and therefore
primacy in the creativity for which
he will garner the accolades.
Having gauged the situation,
he was now alone like any one
of those bodies to be dug up
in the cinematic guise of death.
Not the Autobiographical
He knew he should not use:
the keeper’s gibbet as parable / the killing of runts &
myxomatosis rabbits for sympathy (yet also
preparation) / ploughing straight lines as psychosis /
rural Romanticism / the bucolic ideal and political
extremism / what he did alone in empty barns.
To Consider a Horse Witch
A tale within a tale
can have Shakespearean
pretention, but also
act like a simple sub-plot:
the dried fresher’s
backbone pocketed as
mystical potion and
historical substance,
a palliative but also
restorative and even
miracle cure in a world
of hope and delusion.
Is the relevance going to be
belief over fortuity; and
how do you reference /
convey the arcane of this?
Not Forgetting the Allusion
Having ‘recovered’, managing
what had been jeopardy
must be sustained. She was
buried, but this is not
resurrection. Not a happy
ending. Agriculture and
disability are not necessarily
artistic companions.
Pre-Release
Farmers complained, obviously,
carrot-fingers unable to grasp
allegory even as fabrication (unlike
de-bollocking as neutralising
reality). This is a drama,
FFS! It is giving a voice
to those buried in the hay-stacks;
it is a cultivation too.
A Review of Scenes
No one counted their number,
lost in the subtleties;
constraint is also considered artistic.
As the writer, I never mentioned
who or why. But could they
empathise? Ask yourselves.
Years After That Denouement
Remember how a voice-over defines metaphor;
visually, all was pastoral rather than
brutal in the slow pan across
her representation of a life losing out.
Photo of Mike Ferguson
BIO: Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK. His TextArt and concrete poetry is widely published online; his most recent book publication is an erasure collection 'the aran aphorisms' (Red Ceilings Press, 2024), and a new set of found poetry is out with RCP later this year.