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
commentary
Jimi Hendrix, 80 today
Jimi, are there harps in heaven.
For your ears, hearing, making, breathing
Rhythm round the planes of colour like
Light itself, the frequency is that high.
James Marshall Hendricks
Born 27th November 1942.
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.
Carl Fabergé – a god of small things
Did God know, when he made
The world that he would make you
And you would make mini
World’s out of his shiny
Offcuts?
Of course, God knows everything
God is everything, God’s work
Is intricate, the diamond
The cut, the carve, the egg
Hatches.
It reminds us of the surprise
Of birth, of Spring, every
Year, reborn, but totally
Unexpected in its
Dazzling
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)
Sidelines
We are loping in the margins, waiting For time to become ours again.
The margins get smaller as Larger type fills the page.
Back stage romance
I know they think
Less of me because
I am not seen with you
A single woman
A single human
A strange thing
A heavy thing
A pack animal
Alone.
A flat plain
An empty pan
A loose string.
And so alone we go
And it goes on and on
Like Herbie Hancock
Playing to himself,
Cooking music on his stove
Avoiding all the expected notes.
Quiet panic
The heat has taken our
Breath away, has robbed us
Of free will. Everything must
Tilt towards the coolness
Between our self and this.
But where is it?
She is angry, she is raging
The taste of Nature has curdled
And we were curdling it
Deliberately, like we could
Sell it on to the next generation
Or aliens as some sort of
Local delicacy roasted slowly
Between Venus and Mars
Or somewhere in that primitive
Galaxy, so strong, so stupidly.
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.
Being Every Day 