DRAMA:

She drank too much, ended up in hospital again. 
He moved out, no, he didn’t move, he’s on my sofa. 
Both of them are in love with their drama.
He’s in love with himself & her. 
She’s in for 4 months, it’s a kind of a true love story.
He’s a little star, she’s a sad chicken, a strange sort of goose,
she wants a baby.
He’s jealous, but he’ll probably give in. 
It’s a kind of true love story, rough as a robber’s dog. 

(K)

TRAIN FULL OF PORRIDGE:

One more early to the carpark, slot it in beneath the CCTV camera
& wave. Will the ticket machine work today or click & hum till 
it’s too late to catch the train, only to tell you it can’t 
read your card again? Running for to the ticket office hauling heavy 
bags reminding yourself to get back into training as soon as 
Christmas stuffing is over. Squeezing through automatic doors that 
choose today to switch to manual so that you have to fight with 
reluctant pistons, push against the laws of physics sending metal 
shuddering back into it’s brassy sheath as you force your way 
into the ticket hall. Every one looks round on crowded Monday where 
you find only one ticket window open & a queue backed up behind slow
probing questions about the price of travelling to obscure 
destinations on circuitous routes, specific to days spread out across 
months – a face you’ve never seen on this line before today. 
The impatient fidget, check watches, glance out the window & strain 
to hear rails hissing, heralding the arrival of a train they are 
condemned to miss. Instead, you smile, you grin & chuckle, 
feeling dust settle & the sound of buildings creak & click.
The world rushes past at speeds that hurt the ear & eye whilst you 
are being held, floating in gentle patterns – exactly where 
you’re meant to be, right here, right now, today  

(K)

AROMA:

I smell mince pies whose pastry was made to a recipe 
passed on by an woman who lived in the forest with her
home made jams & cakes & dogs & mould & home made wines 
& towering oaks & succulent mosses & holly wreathes & the 
low ‘thud-thud-thud’ of a diesel generator.
Today they taste of Heaven.

(K)

GAMING:

A Cold & opalescent sky, toes protrude from beneath the covers, 
legs like litmus paper draw chill from the morning. 
The kettle boiled, a flask prepared, thermal layers stacked at 
the door in preparation. Anticipation, a quiet knot in the 
stomach, a thrill, a tremor, anxious at the outcome of a game 
yet to be played. Car prepared, heater on, radio station set 
to it’s traditional number, sat nav, map & conversation cover 
the thoughts at the back of the mind ‘what if’. The tribe of the 
white line gather, familiar smiles & eyes that flicker to the 
face & to the ball. Fists like hammers nestle deep in pockets, 
last season’s ski jackets scarves & comedy hats retrieved from 
the back of cupboards. Blow the whistle! 

(K)

LATE:

No time for breakfast again

(K)

LAUGHING:

“Where are you?” asked the text
“On the train going home”
“How’s the poetry?”
“Silent as the gravy”
“Are you laughing?” 
“Yeah, in  Black-n- Grey”
“Me too, I’m surrounded” 

“Does yours smell of printing ink?”asked the text
“Yeah & beer filtered through salty skin”
“Like old pennies?”
“Yeah. Did I used to smell like that?”

“Worse”

“Now I’m laughing!”

(K)

ALARMED: 

The commuters stand closer than they should today. Every space I find
they follow, congregate around me in perfumed clusters chocolate 
coated. At Liverpool street station there’s alarms & a voice, almost 
human,talking down a tube at us. It sounds important, like we’re meant 
to evacuate. Everybody mills around, ignoring the indecipherable song
he sings. Though the place is alarmingly empty & those of us left 
are pin pricks bumping around on the marble canvas of the concourse, 
lights in our eyes & the aroma of deadskindust rising up from holes 
into the earth, leading us down into the Underground.

(K)

CHILL:

A bitter fog to start the day, cold & thick grey soup
that clings to glass & metal, permeating everything 
with holes. A cold wait on the platform, another delay 
on the rails. The magic of a carriage cold above the 
waste & freezing below again, sliding into the city 
with closed eyes meditating. It started dark & caged
& found the light mid morning, talking to the man who 
came to collect a drum kit whose life was saved by 
para-medics back in April as he lay twitching on the 
tarmac outside an north London rehearsal studio. 
I asked him, 
“What went through your mind?”

He said,

“That I was too young & I’d been short changed”

(K)

JUST FOR TODAY:

A small box of sliced apple, a peppermint tea to settle the
stomach, images of Cy Twmbly’s Flower Paintings in Paris to
set us up for the train, a journey with Alain de Botton.

(K)

HOOPER:

Listening to the music of Hooper Swans on the BBC in the morning, 
looking at pictures of devastation from the aftermath of the night
I was meant to be documenting birdflight with a friend. 
The Hoppers create melodies with their cacophony & I go searching
for more, tuning the radio for another noise to light up the room.
A South African icecream vendor improvising happy songs about 
Chocolate to celebrate the life of a man. 

“He was a good man” says another “…and now he belongs to the World”

(K)