The rough sleepers
keeping diaries of
near misses and
misadventures
staying alone and alive
living on their wits
eschewing assistance
except
from the social and
the occasional good
Samaritan.

Jesus plays his part,
free tea in the park
meals at the mission
seems god is fishing
for converts,
but
It's hard to believe
in a better life
when you have no life
and you gave your last smoke
to someone poorer than you.

I imagine me
outside
the British library
reading Burns
and who's to say
We
could be that rough sleeper
you passed today
reading
Burns
taking turns
to write in the diary.

Programmed to fail but the rogue programme sails on
into decimal places where few people have gone.

Is it that time already?, said Teddy,
who was going to a picnic with Yogi.

The answer on the street,
it's time for us to meet

But it's Thursday, exclaimed Friday
who was sat under a palm tree.

I woke in Tewkesbury and
who knows where that is.

it's okay
I'm rearranging the signals
trying for better reception
and not going mental
as some would suggest.

..and in some lonely doorway
lay the homeless,
huddled together to share some
little warmth
but
it'll be
'ice cold in Alex..'
before they can relax,

it's chilly out there
they bear it well
it
must be hell though.

Shiloh
a long time ago
biblical
and
the battle of
Shiloh
not so long ago
just goes to show
what men can do
when they
have a mind to.

You went to your universities
rehearsing your autobiographies
and
we are still as different as
chalk and cheese
and I suppose you'll know 
a chemical symbol
for those,
but
I wrote the writing to spend one more night in
her arms,
she left the light on to write me a love song
and
you don't need a degree for that.

It was your name I fell for first.
An instant name crush when I saw it –
two names I’d never have considered putting together,
but how beautiful, how unexpected.

Of course I fell for you name first.
Names are so much easier to fall for:
all the possibility in Florence, its softness, its grandness,
all the temptation in the way Delilah slips off the tongue;
the potential for a story about a girl named Ilaria Winter.

-

I fell for your style next, then your hair,
then the way you introduced yourself with both names
and then the way you spoke in class.

I think I stared at you too often, and I’m sorry.
I didn’t think I was being obvious, and I hardly thought
you would notice (someone as boring as) me.

But you must have, and I’m sorry.
I’m sorry you talked to me for the first time at the station,
when the train was fourteen minutes late, the moon looked
strange in the sky and I was contemplating jumping onto the tracks.
I’m so sorry you spoke to me at the train station of all places.

Yes, train stations have so much potential for beginnings,
but it’s far more likely they’ll be about endings,
about the fleeting, the slipping, the moments of going separate ways,
the longing for home and the crying into books kind of moments.

-

(But thank you, thank you anyway, for talking to me and knowing my name
and complimenting my hair and my boots and my clothes.
I wish I could have told you I loved the way
the bow in your hair matched your heels but I couldn’t and I’m sorry)

-

How disappointing it is to open something and find nothing in it,
because that’s me and I’m so sorry.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, because I’ve had to be creative
with my front to conceal the dreary words of my pages.

(And maybe – most definitely – I’m reading too much into this anyway,
but I’m boring and nothing much happens in my boring life (because
I don’t let it and I’m sorry.))

-

But thank for trying (and I’m sorry, so sorry).

-

I just wish you wrote poetry because at least then I could attempt to compliment that.

(and maybe you do write poetry, but I guess I’ll never know, will I?)

(I’m sorry.)

You know the type.
She's probably called something like
Isabella. Rosalie. Ginevra.
and you find her in the sort of novel where
she's outdone by someone called something like
Jane. Agnes. Lucy.
She's remembered in criticism as
Trivial. Silly. Foolish.
She's defined as Shallow. Vain. False gold.
She's analysed as the mirror, the contrast or the foil
and you're supposed to vaguely dislike her.
She'll reaffirm to the reader that the heroine,
whether she be plain or beautiful, is always, in the end,
Rational. Independent. Brave.
She reaffirms the heroine as someone who
learns and grows
while the silly girl is left looking at herself in the mirror.

The thing is sometimes I feel more like the silly girl,
the girl who needs a hand, the girl who reads books
and wants to believe the stories.
Sometimes, I'm looking in the mirror,
chest deep in my own trivial, silly little worries,
looking at the puddles not the lake, and I know.
I know I'd be one of the silly girls,
not the heroine, out there, just surviving.
I'd be one of those silly girls and I hate it - and yet
- what's so wrong with the silly girls?

What's so wrong with the girls who love themselves,
or love the wrong people or love their clothes?
What's wrong with the girls who are
brave but not rational,
independent but trivial,
selfish but practical?

What's wrong with those girls,
because I always find myself preferring
the Ginevras and the Isabellas anyway.

Pine Flats,
that's in Colorado
and this I know though not
because I've been there
but I've seen it on a Western show
a long time ago
and towns like that don't change.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Oh God,
when I thought transubstantiation
was one of those movements
but
only for a moment
until the wine kicked in.