exercise 5: write about a noun (I didn't really get it, but our model was a story called boys)

Wheels

The wheels on the bus, on the bicycle, on the car, the skateboard, the trolley, the truck, all go round.

The wheel revolutionised thinking. Time became circular – seconds, hours, seasons turning and returning endlessly. The thing with wheels, as you move away from a point, you move toward it just as fast. One revolution and you're back to precisely where you started. Was this the end of progress?

The boys spin their wheels as the world turns. They hide behind alcohol and steering wheels. Their cars and macho bullshit – bravado, insults and violence – a lager of circled wagons protecting them from feeling. They look for someone to feel with. Learn their lines by rotery, recycle what someone said worked for them. Their revolution will not happen between these thighs. Their revolution will not happen. Not by television, not by degrees. Not.

The pill revolutionised sex – allowed us to control our reproductive cycles, no reason to say no. Leads to a hospital ward, where nurses wheel babies away from teenage girls towards nice white couples. Diametric. Do they have a colour wheel they compare these babies to – spin it fast and we're all white? My tangent – can we be diaspora in our own country? My central point, every revolution takes you back to the start.

While recognising the cycles, we're still rats racing. The big wheels of business and government turn the wheels of justice. The fortunate push their barrows, wheeling and dealing. Dictating the wheels our shoulders are put to. The process is protected – wheels within wheels and no-one can see it whole. But the wheel cutters put the cogs in cognition. Think it through, we can still put a spoke in their wheel.

I'm talking about an inevitable violent transition from one system of production to another, an overthrow of a system by the governed. No revolving, recycling or returning. I'm talking about spinning off and out and past my dreams. I'm talking about breaking the wheel, not the butterfly.

The wheels on the bus, in the wind turbines, in the casinos, the revolvers, the wheelie bin sound systems, our heads. All go round.