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)

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

So little time

Can I make the space bigger,
between stops on the Tube,
for mind to breathe in
and out over the din
of the stomach and
thoughts and errands
and commitments and
distances between states
I could be or should be or
would be –

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.

Light pollution

Oh I wish they

Wouldn’t sing at

Night, the birds,

When my chest

Is tight and the

Road to Day is

Spiked with dreams

That cannot be

Seen in light of bird

Noise, rogue

Dawn speech strayed

Off the sun.

 

Please sit quiet

On your branch

And wait, if sleep

Is too heavy for the

Light state of a

January that knows

No snow but isn’t

Spring.

 

Blossom is already

Breaking the tired grey,

Confused from lack

Of sleep because

Autumn forgot to turn

All the lights off and

Let the heating run all

Night.

Saturday 3rd Septemeber 2011: Demonstrations in London.Late headline.

One week has passed

And not much  has

Been said on the

BBC – as

Far as I know.

Saturday 3^rd

The orange mosque,

Whitechapel – not

A word has passed

News Night’s tired lips;

Will The Week dig

Up what went on?

What’s clear is that

Certain breeds of

News aren’t welcome

Here, in Britain

The doors are barred

While truths queue up

Voices down, just

Protestors, no need

To make a song

And dance about,

The neighbours might

See, heaven forbid.

A house on a London terrace

The house was built in 1864 or thereabouts

With bricks and mortar

In the usual way,

Set down on the street

‘Tween two just the

Same.

No, I lie. Next

Door was a shop,

Greyed out now, modern

Style, frosted windows, the works.

Behind doors to the house of

A family, bent by

Chance into odd-

Shaped rooms, tombs

For the spirits of eras

Passed, mingling now and

Then with the plates on

The rack or a glass in the

Cupboard, no harm meant.

After twenty five years

No surprise at a flying saucepan.

A family lived in the house,

Part of it, kin to it,

Whatever its freight.

Besides, after twenty five years, they

Had their own ghosts as guests,

Those former selves in former

Times living on,

Resonating in overlapping lines.

The cello practice, the barking

Dog, the sleeping dog,

The trampoline, the one that

Broke, the roller blades,

The skipping rope.

The time when budgies tweeted

In the kitchen

And Ma cooked at 6 for me

And 8 for him, again.

The time when garden’s shade

Was less and next door neighbour

Had a cat called…called….

Times gone but still present

In the ether, round the stairs, up the blocked chimney,

Or the skylight, then

Down, over mossy steps

And at the back door, again,

With a ratataptap, like a

Ghost..

No, it must be Jack

The new next door neighbour’s

Cat.

Published in Balladof Magazine, October 2009

Waterloo at Sundown

Rolling down

Down hill, Life

Is easy like

Punch and the Sun,

Today, on the river,

Red and round

And full of warm

Deep ochre,

 Along the river

It ran thick

And cooled quickly

Into twilight we could walk on,

Dry and clean, through

The drum-song of buskers

And the smoke of drinkers,

After work.

Who walked? I and

Passers by, passing by

The river, passing us.