London of 2014

The streets here might be like vines.

Theres no rhyme about it.
These cars are city cars; that means theyve grown wild.
Were crossing the street and the taxi growls,
Deep in its throat like a crouching beast.
And this city becomes a jungle.
And its the night in the blinding weak flashing lights,
The mumbling roar of a pub
The antlike milling about a theater
The hissing rush of track in a cavern, hot wind on your face
The stately quiet of an upper floor of a gallery
Above the canopy of trees
The telephone booths grown over with graffiti
Like a tower from a lost civilisation.
The motley whirl of Camden town, colors screaming out
Like sprawling blossoms, perfumes sweet, light, acrid, rotting.
Its a river bed, and molded by the slightest stirring.
The leaves twist in the wind.
A mound of glasskaleidescope
Its like its own weather.
Sun sinks, light slips
The fallen leaves gets drunk into roots while
The next branches crack and fall
The landscape sprouts up new again.
And all the trees a repeated pattern
An always shifting pattern.
Standing on the south bank of the Thames
Which way did we come in?

Tube
Green yellow red blue
Grip your bag youre not paying
Attention platform 2
3. Baker Street. Change to
Edgware Road. Line circle
Chiming gone
Find a bar balance your
card your bag pay attention
papers litter winding hall
headline: Strike. West End,
Millions of . Today tonight
Black streams past
through American Hustle
change platform map
Wicked come see West
Kensington Masterpiece brilliant
lights glancing off tile
tube and north south
Jubilee Southwark
Paddington jolt a flurry
a clap of feet a suitcase
Switch stations
jolt back Mind the Gap
Mind the Gap. Mind it
What if I were the only
one who didnt to Victoria
check time Mind the Gap
step onto cement way out
travel card up stairs
off with the crowd doors
are closing now Mind the doors
Which way
Run to the wind
of ticking clock
Track.

From Beatrice to Benedick,

At Westminster Bridge, beside a Lamp Post of Padlock Hearts
Dear Signior:
I do love nothing in the world so well as you.
Is not that strange?
And vexingly stupid?
When you always end in a jades trick,
Always land and then youre water
And to let myself fall into your arms
Is more terrible than letting myself
Tumble into these jagged wave peaks below.
Like Ophelia, drowned in her own tears,
Let the silted water cloud my lungs.
No. I grip the rail with whitened fingers.
I would never let myself fall.
Rusting painted locks
Clutch this lamp forever, linking arms
For dear life for mythical love
More transient than a passing breeze.
But one day I imagine those tiny metal wings
Will take flight
All those hearts
Rising in a cloud
Over this river
And the horizon
To follow that wavering line and drop
All their trembling secrets, hopes, roses
Into the sea.
And let me be free of them.
Until that day, and all after, I will
Sing I will tell tales
And strike you with daggers of fancy
Nothing but a passing breeze, stinging,
And I will sigh no more
Over such a cheap trinket
As affection.

Because the waves will toss those still-warm metals,

Round the edge of form until
They are shining pearls, safe from any storm.
My heart will stay there, locked away;
Its key will be lost in the current.
And I will remain
My own.

Some change
The man with the faded jeans
And the unwashed hair
and that desperation as he asks it again,
Spare some change? scuse me, maam,
spare some
fainter. Because weve turned away.
Is it my imagination that he looks gray?
That whatever these overcast days between cement
has thrown on him, it hangs, wrenching, around his shoulders?
Say all he needs is a bus ticket home.
Say there is no home. What does he need?
The crowd pushes me forward.
Someone will help him.
The people flow, keep coming, keep passing.
Someone else.
Unwise to stop.
Another man busking, ragged beard and sweet music.
Appreciate that.
Stop for him.
The next one. Youll miss your train.
The next one sits
against the phone box
hes huddled
against the piercing wind.
a blanket, black, clutched around his shoulders.
Spare some change? Maam?
And cant I? Cant I.
The crowds pressure is building at my back.
Unwise to stop, youll get left behind
Youre weak and youre young, now dont add nave
Like I really think hes a danger to me.
Like I really think its some shameless act?
And how do you know?
Its getting dark.
Youre young, you get lost
I need to keep walking.
You dont know a thing; its not your city.
I dont know how to help. The moon rises through fog.

Not your city.

Ill keep seeing them, though I tuck my head away
Theyre all still there.
The wind feels cold on my eyes, my hands
Turn your eyes to the lights. Straight ahead.
Cold.
Keep walking.
You cant help them all.

[the street at night]

the city lights glow cold at night,
so thats when you have to walk along the Thames
and feel the tide roll its liquid pulse
and breathe.
while all those lights paint auroras on the lapping ripples.
On the wet sands below,
a cell phone lights yellow like a single candle flame
on a young girls face.

the current rolls faster.

crowds jostle on the lane
I dodge them coming at me like ghosts
out of a fog
rising up in an instant, falling away the boulders in the river the unlit islands
my foot passes over an eye
it stares up from the pavement
to ward off strangers
Then a glass has shattered
glistens like a broken star on the walk
still as a monument to a crime
the people skirt its shards
On the bin a cigarette sits half
crumpled, left alight and smoking
like incense.
Keep walking. Bulbous lanterns rise like tethered moons.
they trail the river to home.

empty art
steel girders, abandoned
or just an orphaned tea tray.
bone-whitewhite-washed
of what consequence is color
theory, emotion, none.
we swerved because we were stuck
wanted to experiment.
well, we were war-torn
we were getting up
trying to
shell-shocked in a transformed land
smoke-clogged
bewildered eyes could make out
nothing
we once thought existed.
begin with the mantra:
I know nothing.
we are war-torn.
now all these days of
fragmented song
so many songs
maybe all those we had
to speak chaos
speak loss
maybe too much sung
again, again
until the lines corroded
chipped off with each telling
until we held ghosts, skyscraper skeletons

industrial waste towered

and craters, blackened
under volcanic cloud-cover.
and just iron fragments enough
for a handful of punctuation.

Southwark Cathedral
Meditations
White light showers hushed
I feel it falling on my hair, hands, eyes;
Lifts up my face.
Divine light,
pure light,
to strip away shadows,
Motes of dust swirling in its reaches.
Columns flow from stone
Rise as tree boles
Arches peak,
pointing to vaults, domes that float
On sunlit air.
Dazing heights.
In this atmosphere
A soul could spiral up,
Climb the breeze
Like smoke
Like dance
Among waning mellifluous waves
Soft trembling chords.
Step softly through the aisles.
A votive candle wavers
A prayer lifts in gentle apparitions
For war-torn Nigeria
A wavering hope for light
In the eye of fear
hatred
Dark.
We do this.
We let the wavering spark expire
Paradise dissolves
With a breath out of place.

And yet these miraculous heights.

From ashes
Growth
Flourishing
Peace.
A whisper breathed into us
Spirit that taught us
Teaches us all
To soar.
And so we fly to be whole.
But enough of this.
This space is best suited to
Silence.

Trafalgar Square
People spill into the valley, skirt the fountain pools, climb the steps rayed out like a
contour map. A single mass, moving fluid in all its multitude of parts, small lives, the droplets in
the pools cycling steady through the fountain. The school group from France hugging close
together, school of fish weaving through; the street performers calling out to their crowded
audience to the beat of heated music, shines gold under the sun; the couple flowing down the
steps of the National Gallery; the school kids on a trip, climbing on the lionsbronze lions,
lounging on the job to guard the single man lifted up the clouds to overlook that plateau of
buildings, sheer cliffs between rivers of streets. A miniscule pigeon lands on his head. He keeps
stoic. Looking down on all those small lives moving in streams into pools, oceans altogetherall
these pieces under towering billowed clouds.