9th Floor:

Good for views in real terms equates as multiple times the number
of floors of glares on the stairs, some less random and aggressive as others
Some from young lads
Some from their mothers -
Who’ll squeeze their ******* for a fiver, but its more for inside her -
It’s always an Apache tunnel of prickly vibes and jibes with little to say
And neighbours who turn out to be mental,
Found in the gutter, covered in butter
and thankfully sectioned later that day

Balcony Life:

Sometimes I just watched outside, and it was a glorious day.
Children actually played. Groups sunbathed and basked in beer
Ice-cream vans were heard not far from here
Above a plane heading somewhere etched its mark
traced in nothing but just plain blue sky,
for miles, as far as the eyes could see.

Up the motorway, the sun ignites on speeding sunroofs
Toward the Campsie Fells set in a haze of bottle green
The white trickle of yesterdays snow cut like some dyslexic ancient symbol
A place for misspent youth and baking trays on icy days

A hot cheap brand coffee in a chipped petrol-token mug
Perched on weathered wrought iron painted brown like last year
Meant so much in that moment grasped and shaped like glass with glee
I remember that there is life in this here estate sometimes
Watching as you do,
from your own slice of life on your patch of balcony

Urban Community Living:

Some days I actually noticed how grey it was
All of this space, here around us
As our half-beaten stone trodden 52 bus
Rolls into its unfortunate terminus.
Terminal more like.

The shops have boarded windows,
Bakeries have bullet-proof counters
Staffed by bulky bakers-***-bouncers
A praised underground centre for perilous shopping
Dodge rival factions on various floors
Fighting for stair supremacy
And burly painted girls with latent spent applause

Some colour on the underpass is some relief
Only it warns of impending doom
for someone soon

Yours is not a caged minor bird
That has forgotten how to fly
Who has not wings to unfurl
Or a voice to sing harks of warm air
Even on winter mornings

Glide the up-draft and all it’s edges
Where you said you’d fallen from
And where I could see my footprints
Lost in the distance
Far below

I have no fear of falling.
Dive bomb the rocks below
or take faith in the air beneath -
Flap and talk of leaving someday
Ready a perch in wanton relief
and take what you’re given

I am not a bird
I have forgotten how to sing sweetly
Others make noise
Blissfully unawares
of the harmonium which awaits

As a sound or a note overheard,
captured on the ear.
Without knowing the scale
Or the instrument
But the sounds or an urban minor bird

You are in essence
as effortless
as air Itself

Stolen words
Silenced by emotion
Unsure of its own momentum
or direction

And Sunday’s birds
Lead old aged couples
On leafy walks
to park benches strewn in sunlight
in memory to someone they hadn’t met.

Porous arms of light outstretched
Rebuffed by the lapis lazuli hue of night
Frantic star-bursts
On every street corner
Facing south-east

I head North.

Pounding bass.
Sub-sonic strobes.
Synthetic smoke.
Alone on the dance-floor
I was glad to see another
clubbers curves move in rhythm;
Uninhibited by the foot tapping brigade
who watched with intensity.

You edged ever closer
Till our smiles became infectious.
An uncertain bond of understanding,
amid an endless rush of acidic bleeps.
Uncluttered.
Uncrowded.
Mystically shrouded in transient beats,
we strangers come together in unity

Your hips move to the pneumatic bass
as transient hardhouse and
tribal breakbeats embrace,
The foot tappers again resume,
Spontaneous rushes
and some sulphur that is sour to taste.

We may have unzipped and consumed
to electronic tunes,
but the tune remains the same -
Beautiful stranger dream a dream for me
because now all we have between us is
Rain.

Fear not those things greater than I,
that have yet to come.
Hence -
Speed your bow and arch your steel my son.

There is no oath sworn that will save thee,
Tis' backbone and a heart of lead.
Withstand weakness and a woman's scorn.

Nor' cry for a sorrow kept in time,
for you are not just anyone, anymore.
You are a Man,
and, more importantly,
a son of Mine.