22/03/2026
Grown in single column, tall
Thin trees of nature sterilised beside the drainage bank of fresh water emptied to sea. Line the stone footpath that cuts through tamed green grass square park of Queen Elizabeth playing fields, would be wetland without monks & the engine.
Rowed trees reach from earth mud as does the government housing, amongst leviathanic concrete tower blocks dressed in brown & blue coloured patches risen to skies by domination, power amongst streets of poverty titled named & numbered remnants of the Dane Court, mocked.
Concrete that dwarfs nature, cubic towers casting shadow of concentrated modernity through the abundant space of land north of Humber mud & the high trees planted to border edges, those lives within & without that differ on a postcode.
Placed few metres apart the trees that never knew their name as few others did or accepted willingly their place without voice & the Latin. Tall tree of the black poplar their height more than title, narrow, thin & proud, hear them Whispering in the wind leaves of flowing torrent.
Dance in the breeze leaning & bending West in flexibility & great resistance, you see them on the highest branches at the pinnacle A dangerous height where them young estate boys cling for life, swaying in the trade winds as once did primate & cotton sailor.
Early teens that look less aged, pasty skin & bone with shaved hair, skinned for the lice & the lack of money, fair & blonde headed, snot nosed, dirt faced, spud necks of the sparrow bodied youth, raised on to***co smoke, bread with margarine, chip oil & shrapnel, they dance on northern winds as seeds amongst branches clinging to the stem, light as leaves with an iron grip they drift on the wind, unknowing their guilt of being & state cost burden.
Sway the tree tops & the estate boys hold on fearless & effortlessly, at one with natures force, sailing the great rivers of invisible air that flow borderless these lads as human kite, rustling leaves & the North Hull Estate kids learning their place in Blighty, poverty & Thatchers hateful spite.
In the moments on high trees amongst nature they hold A view & feeling that exceeds the height of brutal tower blocks & street monotony, first floor bedroom windows of red brick & cream houses below terracotta tiled roofs beside the kerb, with frames of old air raid shelters in the garden. Watching on at the park, the ants at play on painted cold steel spaceship climbing frame, roundabouts, metallic slides fear, swing the chained seats & the jump skywards, apparatus of the urban zoo beside the road with passing toy cars that burn heavy leaded fuel & break mistaken bodies crossing.
Blighties urban children made giants for A short while with green tree for A pedestal. The fall, don’t think of it shattered bone & death they don’t bounce at 40m, yet the skinny kids in old black tracky bottoms & holy woolly jumpers, it seems would never fall or if they did float to earth like fallen leaves on the wind, and it’s no famous five or magnificent 7, yet not quite Oliver or Bugsy, the violence is there as is the depravity & hopelessness, North Humberland 1980 something the Danelaw made ghetto, estate kids climb high trees risk, defiantly acting out, existence.
If they grew black poplars in the death camps they wouldn’t look out of place, the North Hull boys by Humber Estuary.
Raised on poverty, bread & crabsticks, hated no less & survived it, the inter generational prejudice, factories & mills to despair of fishing fleets & muddy trenches, the forgotten genocide titled world at war.
They see you from the top and wave with no hands & v fingers, no fear see, am not scared of nowt, & they spit on the wind, the big greenies pulled from throats back and launched as luftwaffe bombs or dam busters if they catch the wind, flying spit at the groundlings below, looking up at the untouchables, lost children raised for the coffin or estate king down the local pub.
Around the corner the traffic & the injuries, not all make it through, less make it out, wolves for family, the streets awash with lipstick, fishnets, ale & cheap booze, brown he**in sailing in from the east takes its chunks.
It’s a bullet run of hoods in the firing line, childhood, adulthood & the elderly, stories of the underclasses, once made tools of production at farms & factories, wealth matured on chained labour until set free by machinery & held back by hate, as the merchants, farmers & English gentleman watch on in quaint towns & villages, peripheral’s of the city, themselves holding on to nowt but space & masonry, country & the parallel lives in concentration as the SS guards once stood the boundary fence, exist there as a heavy secret in Englands heart.
Written Photographs
Tis England
Kingston Upon Hull 1980 something
3m above sea level
