i took the morning train today.
hushed city streets and
sweater-grey skies,
clouds like milk in coffee.
a flurry of wings, silent strangers,
heads down, umbrellas up,
sunshine dreams and briefcases.

i took the morning train today.
left the city behind me,
grey walls and grey pavement
and grey concrete skies.
red buses, black taxis,
camera clicks and glinting lenses,
crumbling walls and lost tourists.

i took the morning train today.
watched as the city fell away
behind the horizon,
rain drumming on the glass.
somewhere, birdsong
and the glint of blue skies
beckons me home.

an angel fell from the sky tonight.
he wandered the streets, wings trailing
(didn’t last long — do you know how
difficult it is, getting chewing gum
out of feathers?)

the angel squinted at the
headlight-drenched
pavement, the neon signs
and gold squares stamped into
the sides of skyscrapers. he
lifted his wings against the rain
and looked for his stars
but only saw the red light
of a passing plane.

last night the wolves came.

there are plum bruises across the sky
and mountains burnt white with faded sun and there’s a path seared sharp into the pines that brightens as the sky dims.

there’s a nameless man beneath the gallows
squatting like a carrion-bird at a ****. a
smile splits his face like a wound
there’s blood like spilled wine, great grinning
pools of it, and the snows are thirsty to drink

and there’s a woman with a story like a knife
and nothing to lose, and she sharpens her words and follows the fraying path into the woods.

the wolves come.

they always do.

black eye no eye three eyes,
do you hear the ravens?
you measure yourself in summers;
lie down and let the snows fall,
cut-glass pines and grey sky
and the path scarring up
into the clouds.

these are the winters we wait for,
these are the winters that claim us.
close your eyes and fill your lungs
with snow and ice
and snow and ice.

here the sunshine patriot, bright and bleached –
they plucked the stars
to hang them from your chest. the rest are
gone, hidden by light pollution
and concrete skies.
your eyes reflect the blank face
of stopped clocks; steps from the car,
summer soldier.

but winter hides in
the cold metal of the trigger

a bang –
it echoes in fireworks, spatters the street with
blue white red red red.

the stutter of a gun,
or just a backfiring car?
sunshine man melts in a puddle of gaudy red,
the colour of sticky ice lollies
and patriotism.

here the newscaster, weeping tirelessly
for the camera.
“he was our country,” he says, and wasn’t he just?
back alleys and sunshine and
wanting to go back, wanting
to hide in the past.

and here the politicians, mourning loudly
into crisp white handkerchiefs. oh, how i wish we could
freeze time, draw grimaces in markers
on their painted faces
and watch them point fingers.
they use pretty words
heroic, or tragic
and pat their sweaty backs.

meanwhile,
sunshine man bleeds into the gutter
red white blue
the colour of freedom.

You wanted a love story, sweetheart—
    well, I’m an unwritten tragedy;
  hand me a skull and I’ll monologue
while Rome burns.
      We’re two acts in and falling fast,
         we’re half a city down and soon
            there’ll be nothing but ashes.

          You wanted a love song, baby—
        I’ll sing to you in a minor key,
harmonies in the rain under neon stars,
            screaming in tune with flowers in your lungs
      and blood in your hair
and city lights and city lights and
                                               city lights.

You wanted a love letter, honey—
“Dear Heartbreak,
   I’ve got purple bruises on my chest
     where my prose hits me. I’ve got
       a mess of clichés and a dark and stormy night
         and a pinch of melodrama,
           no talent but I’m trying, honest.
             I don’t suppose you could maybe
              unravel me a little?
               Cut me open like a knife through butter?
                Maybe then I’ll bleed words;
                 maybe then the poems will spill out of me,
                  entrails unravelling.”

You wanted a love poem, darling—
                meet me in your aspect and your eyes
               at ten o’clock tonight. Rome’s burning, baby,
              and all our lions are loose. No time for
    sonnets; we’ll climb the Colosseum with
    our flowers and our songs and
                             we’ll deny the gaudiness
                                                     of the day.

You wanted love, sweetheart—
I’ll give you everything I am:
           a burnt-out city,
           a soliloquy in G minor.
               I’ll play til my fingers bleed,
                     sing til my voice gives out and
                                                             ­            maybe—
maybe
it’ll do.