The occupant sips wine,
*** burning fingers,
her only company
are the cockroaches
that sanctuary in the wallpaper
which peels like sunburn.
Faded linoleum floor
ceiling drips
mirror cracked
blank face staring back.
She sits alone,
grown children flown
like her husband.
Stereo whines from her night stand
‘I have a prince who is waiting
and a kingdom downtown’,
as she gazes through the window
(cracked with cold)
through weepy condensation,
hair knotted with stress
not long enough to let down
for the nobody who waits outside.
Clothes hang like ghosts
suspended from lines,
police cars shriek,
dogs without leashes rumage
through last nights meal.
She toasts to the moon,
lonely like her.
Unnoticed,
outshone
by blaring lights.
She pours another glass,
as the moon tucks in its trailing robe,
dreading the dawn that begins to break.

He has a bench in Central Park,
a step on Seventh Avenue,
a corner on Broadway.
But home is a feeling rather than a location,
something those who have a lock and key and
a mortgage fee will never understand.
The gatekeepers tell him
‘That bench is for people to sit on’,
so he grabs his sleeping bag with beat up weathered hands,
and leaves the park,
realising ‘people’ is another category in which he does not belong.
Autumn is here
so winter is near.
A chance to rush to snowy mountains with Chanel scarves
to escape ‘dreary’ lives.
He takes his vacation
from park to doorway,
views aren’t as nice but it dulls the bite.
As night drapes over Manhattan, he zig zags between expressionless crowds,
invisible
like an unread word.
He seeks a corner just off Broadway (the bright lights numb his loneliness).
In soiled clothes and old scuffed shoes,
he sits on newspaper wrinkled by other hands
and watches passers-by with bloodshot eyes,
bills burning in their pockets.
A man with shoes shinier than dreams
soils his corner with a *** of spit.
He wonders,
do I belong everywhere, or nowhere at all?
And he pulls out his guitar and begins to sing,
October cough thick with illness,
‘They say
the neon lights are always bright
on Broadway’.

The buildings of Upper East Side swell with exhaust fumes
and the roads sweat foul-smelling tar,
while Central Park drips green and magenta,
as friends **** on strawberries
beneath the last of the summer sun.
Butterflies chase children,
children chase kites,
dodging marigolds
that suffocate between blades of grass.
Bird song and police siren compete for centre stage,
and clammy suited men seek shades of green on their lunch break
escaping their lives between midday and one.

In the sky
rafts of white cloud crafts the arrival of autumn,
the park drinks the last of September’s rays.
Maples blush as October lures in the park with a lullaby.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
form parachutes that glide
left  
        to
               right
and spill like coloured pencil shavings.
Warm currents retreat the advancing brisk amber sunsets,
submerging the park in an oily gold blur.
Clouds, swans, boats,
all float upwards
as Autumn peacefully carries Summer to its end.

I push the button,
3
2
1
The jaws of the train clunk as its mouth opens,
the 9am crowd surging through its hollow body,
eying up the row of sickly plastic benches.
The wheels tighten, I loosen my tie,
off to the office, I sigh,
as I pull out today’s ‘New York Times’.

My eyes drift towards the woman across from me.
A fragrance of citrus and strawberry drifts off her shoulder
as she plumps her pout in the screen of her smartphone.
A bead of sweat poised on her collarbone
glitters like the diamantes on her nails.

We slow,
screeching against the rusted tracks
before the machine-lady hybrid speaks:
‘East-
a split second pause
-Sixty Seven Street’.
No one gets off, so we simply sit
beneath the sizzle of electric bulbs,
their garish light numbed by ***** glass
that cradles the bodies of last week’s flies.

Like an aged rattlesnake, the train creaks and hisses through the tunnel.
I’m attacked by a river of thick black hair
belonging to an olive-skinned woman who yaps into her cellphone:
‘no, no, quiero ver Times Square!’
I close my eyes and listen as her tongue rolls and dives
taking a bite of my bagel from Starbucks.

‘East-
anticipation
-Seventy Two Street’.
Although preoccupied with different thoughts,
expressions
destinations
the bodies on the carriage drift and sway with the motion of the train,
as it stops
and starts once more.

Two children in uniforms twirl around the carriage,
their laughter more electric
than the current that bristles below our feet.
A man
tickled by the dreadlock that sweeps over his face,
looks on with jeans so baggy
his legs melt into the seat.
The Jamaican flag blares from his t-shirt.

Next to him, a man bakes in a moth-eaten waistcoat
clutching a wallet with quivering fingers.
I follow his gaze to a picture of a woman
black and white with coffee stained edges.
His wrinkles deepen as he smiles at his
wife?
alive?
I notice glittery pools of the past forming in his eyes,
perhaps not.

‘East-
my stop
-Seventy Nine Street’.
As I glance down at the platform’s monotonous shades of concrete,
and brush the dust from my grey tweed suit,
I think to myself
how colourful Upper-East Side is.
I shall never stop travelling on the 9am subway to Seventh Avenue.
Without it,
how boring my life would be.
Without it,
I wouldn’t be me.

Manhattan bathes in lilac-stained dawn,
patiently waiting for a new day to form.
Skyscrapers tickled by the flicker of confused lights
on
or
off?
Night
or
day?
they wonder
whilst light meets dark,
nodding heads
as they pass each other by.
Taxis creep around corners,
collecting the last of the night raiders,
breath sour and eyes wine-weakened,
allergic to morning light.
Cars groan and begin to carve today’s trails
exhaust pipes snoring
as they huff out polluted clouds into smokeless sky.
The 6.a.m. sun crowns The Empire State Building,
and glazes a million windows like honey-roasted ham.
Chrysler squints,
May’s rays bounce off her bronze-blushed walls.
Sleepless wanderers now sleepy crowds,
wine bottles now coffee cups.
Pigeons flutter between dragging feet,
pecking pavements,
catching the odd petal from the honey-blossoms
that stand like angels amongst grey steel.
A sea of suits cluster at the crossing,
people politely covering yawns
as they wait for the green man to give them instruction,
unsure whether the button has even been pushed.

High in the sky,
The sour rays scorch the drifting sand
which rubs raw against the lonely stretch of land.
It watches over this abandoned place
and listens to the splintering screams of the wind
which whirls the dust into the brown skies.
Lizards scuttle across the rocks that slowly cook
beneath the beams,
while snakes slide through the dry lakes
that shimmer and gleam in this hazy dream.
Time ticks.
The evening sun trudges across the sky
and the tall stones of sand extinguish the flames
until pale grey turns to deep blue.
Stars scatter the sky like tossed diamond dust
while the moon tiptoes up, like a thief stealing the warmth,
breathing and freezing the burnt rocks below.
The owl cracks the cold with its call
and the Desert is alight with a fresh glow,
until the sun returns to defrost the night once more.

My home is the axis.
I am everywhere at once
but still I am lost.
I can show you the world
but you will experience nothing.
Sometimes I worry that I will be forgotten
as I am simply a starting point
for greater things ahead.
I wish I could travel in another direction.
These circles are tiring.
I radiate knowledge from my plump ***-belly,
but inside,
I know far less than you.
I accommodate the whole world,
but my shell still fits in your hands.
I lodge the scorching swelter of the deserts,
but I only feel warmth between your palms.
I breathe the icy air of Antarctica,
but the only snow that bothers me
is the grey blanket that sits on my surfaces
when you are gone for a while.
My home is simply the axis.
I wander all the places  
but still I am no where to be found.