We pilgrims on the rail replacement
Bus to Watford, we pay to be taken
Slowly to our homes.
We move as one, in this little bus of
Souls gathered up by TFL, glad to
Be going home, at last
cities
In search of lost time
I’m sitting on Bute street
In my head the French bookshop
And French bakery Bonne Bouche
Are still here, smelling of books and
Bread, livres et pain
I’m still sitting on Bute street
I open my eyes, I can smell Mama
Pho and it doesn’t go with my
£pp3.50 flat white
I’m looking at a shop called Blanc
With towels and a sign ‘Fashion doesnt
Have to Cost the Earth’ instead of
Books in French
Now I know how old women feel
The ones who talked about the
Old days as if they were better
Now they’re gone
I will not come here again to
Look for the past, I will not
Find it, I will go somewhere
Else to remember.
Postcard from Hoxton
These money people float
Their money makes them
So light
Their soles are not touching
Anything, they live like
Angels
No memories staring back
From the streets they pass,
The ex-
Council blocks they buy
When they come down from
Heaven.
But they never land, they
Glide an inch above real
Living
You can still hear the mortals
From time to time, they
Break out
With feet that know the old
Streets, feet that can’t float like
Angels.
(Written somewhere between Shoreditch and Hoxton)
Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat
These feel like the end days
Of life. The sun, the moon,
The clouds that move, the
Train that stops at every stop
And then goes back again.
The cyclists in the queue
At the traffic lights, leading
South. How long it feels, this
March to death, this mess of
Locks and wheels and limbs
That we call civilisation. How
Vile the stench of sweating
Plastic and half-eaten sandwiches
Discarded in the wrong section
Of the bin, into general rubbish
Down and out
I was eating pizza on the steps when
A beggar asked me for money, I had
None but offered him the other half
With artichokes still hot, but he said
No it wouldn’t feel right, and walked on.
And the next bites were sweeter and
Clearer in the context of his pain, the
Mozzarella soothed my heart as a velvet
Curtain richly slices off the ache of frost.
Lucky me to eat and eat outside out of
Choice, not at home, a home to choose to not be in, not to have to find a nook every night to hook my sleeping soul on, not to
Have to sleep on stone a sleep closer to the night than is comfortable, a public
Closure of my body, a performance to the
City of my freezing lung, not enough heat to snore, just enough to breathe in before the next dreaded dram of coffin-cold air.
Birthday Past
Dark cake and a pair of shoes
On the grave outskirts of Saint James’s Park, just outside the gates, in fact,
On a grey paving slab, quiet clean, but
For the crumbs and smear, like dog shit,
In its roadside homelessness, nowhere
The sweet kitchen that supported it, we presume, before it got led astray, wandered from the safety of the
Picnic blanket, perhaps taken by these shoes..
But they lost their way, neither shoe can tell tales to passing
Strangers now, both are mute.
Was she Happy when she left?
We can only guess and hope she got some new shoes
Midnight chorus
Awake on the city’s lines
Birds sing karaoke, out of time
To Night’s electric dirty
Diesel dittied backing beats,
Dawn turns up unannounced,
And turns up the original track,
Instantly everything syncs back
Into perfect harmony, as usual.
Dutch red light dolls
The one in the first box is
Perched on the wipeable faux
Leather stool, tweeting boredom.
In the next box the stool’s empty.
At the back we can all see his tartan scarf and thick grey coat against her thin
Radiator.
He looks up, relieved
That she’s drawing
The curtain.
Wake up from the daily grind
Wheels on the bus
Go round and round, round and round.
Carry us.
Cleaners, brokers,
One ear off or, surround sound,
All yous, hark
The timetable
Perpetual, it turns found
Into lost.
The world is so loud at night
I hear Morocco pulsing
In my feet and Hong Kong
Twinkling in my throat
Montserratian and Barbadian lapping
Ears over to New Orleans,
Rolling down to Acapulco
Further down Columbian greens
That heard my father’s
First word to the world
Now I’m flying high above
The deep giant squids and
Corals, fighting and fading into blue
Back to Europe, Corfu
Familiar pieces of the jig saw puzzle
Curling at the edges, many missing
Do of it what can be done
With what is left, before
Some breeze, dog or toddler gusts it apart, unthinking.
Being Every Day 