The sound of distant, passing trains. Carrying bleary-eyed commuters to weary-eyed London. So desperate to avoid eye-contact, they read papers, check phones, hack coughs, and snore.
One of the biggest cities in Europe, soon to be filled with people who don't like people.
We are the dreams of febrile minds
We are the streams of we, entwined,
We are the thoughts of such suggest
We are but taught by life, expressed.
You are home today; though it was only
yesterday you left. Time begins, again,
to start to flow in the same direction.
I spy a police car prowling the street on my hill. I quickly shut the curtains - but then I remember I haven't done anything - I open them again to peer through a slot and I catch the car disappearing over the brow. This passes for excitement where I'm from. I calm down with tea.
I dare not touch this early daylight,
It's so fragile I fear it will break.
A bat, it might be a bird,
Is born knowing morning's tensile strength.
It circuits my garden in widening loops,
Pushing the light to its limit,
Knowing that to be recycled
Is to be born again.
A life filled with multiple choices
B rings songs filled with multiple voices
C all the tunes written
D on't fear that they're hidden
E ach chorus is sung by and for us.
3 drunk men at 6am
Sure is quite uncommon
From when did all the boozing stem
I'm sure they've now forgotten
Maybe late out on the town
Toasting some success
Or coping with life bearing down
By early booze excess
3 drunk men at 6am
Half-cut
Half-life
Half-told.
Shining with the eternal gift of light
From a sleeping sun, the moon pulls gently
On a supplicant world
A concertina of tides play out,
Senescent sea shanties are sung
The Sirens will sing as they must;
They can but lure the sailor,
They cannot charm the moon.
A ring of fresh light shuffles nervously around my bedroom curtains, a soft border to a new day. In this hollow of retreating night I re-imagine myself in this new world. I can be whoever, whatever I choose . Limitless options abound. I choose 'thirsty' and make tea.
I panicked.
That wooden fence has spent more time as a tree
That brick wall has spent more time as wet clay
That clay was once wet plants and animals
One time - light jumps from fence to brick to clay
Time is the king of recycling
The king is dead - long live the king.
The howl of the Afghans we've
Left at sea
In a dutiful, leaking boat
They don't scream for money
We've taken their honey
These refugees hardly afloat
Summer begins to glide into memory
As we reach the hinterlands of autumn
Nature consults with her almanac and
Turns the page on another season
Daylight is falling back in on itself
Wooden trails of smoke lead us by the nose
Long bright colours fade into well-earned rest.
You and I lie in bed;
Waiting for gravity to work,
To plunge us into the Earth's core - to subsume us.
We wait for gravity to play its trick;
But we're not there, you and I,
We're not where gravity wants us to lie.
We are already at the centre of the universe - looking out.
I would not travel at the speed of sound
I could not stand the boom
I would not travel at the speed of light
I have not got the room
I will travel at my own pace
I find it more genteel
Sound and light fill my headspace
Where the journey's more surreal
They fall away, they do
The masks we wear all day
We wear them all, anew
For what we dare not say.
One falls each time we meet
Each countenanced fresh trial
We peel away, we seek
Each subtle truth, each smile.
I can still hear an alsatian bark
Where once stood the street to my school
And there stood Cerberus
Guard to the scrap yard
We tiny men of Heracles
Dared closer, closer to its salivating bite
By tiny, giggling girls
He was chained
For a brief, glorious time we were not.
I love vapour trails. Temporary exotic sky maps that remind me of stressed-out clouds. Celestial games of noughts and crosses that hang briefly in space. Lines of life. Do the tiny planes wonder about we invisibles on the patchwork ground? There's plenty of room for thought.
The petals will fall to slow down Summer rides
And crumbled to dust they'll become powdered time
A cleaner patina, an imperfect rhyme
One imperfect wave on an effortless tide.
A smattering of security lights
blink on
blink off
as dark shapes idle
down the hill in our street.
Like nervous actors
they briefly shine.
Illuminating homes,
briefly secure.
At the corner shop they're met with standing ovations of light,
before matinee idling home.
Morning's greying mist.
Heavy as the soppy sponge
that pulls wet birds
from a lathered sky.
Where once we were treading
water in overnight pools
of insomnia and sweat;
now change is afoot,
time is at hand.
Autumnal fingers flex
for the tipping of summer.
In my road - Victorian builders once sealed off views to an everlasting sky, tightly packing hard terraced housing into soft hills. My satellite dish look to the stars through a tiny gap in an urban sky. Most starlight falls upon the roof. I'm comforted by that which makes it.
I glimpse a corner of unassuming sky from behind my bedroom curtain. I wonder how many countless stars lie inside this tiny patch. I wonder of other worlds, of other me's, watching back, from other bedrooms. Are they wondering the same as me?
I wave at myself. I wave back.
Cars in my street have yet to wash away
on the sucking tide of the morning commute
Little kerbside boxes
outside larger boxes
drive to other boxes
strive for bigger boxes
We fit the boxes to succeed
We tick the boxes we're decreed
Yet one box is all we'll need.
Orange is the new black. The sun nudges its way to the edge of a dark horizon. This never-ending peat fire bursts from the silent soil of a grateful sky. It will travel its arc, a story of pure light, rising and falling as breath, each spark used to ignite a fresh day.
The last overnight rain gently wipes its feet on a roof. Ancient slate shines beneath the sheen. A terracotta chimney pot is buffed to a dull glow. A TV aerial ripples in expectation. Black dots jostle and settle along its lines, semi-quavering into recognisable droplets of song.
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