Not the drip of freeway from Pittsburgh but a rough trundle
on chalk roads as flaxen skies shade to molten celluloid
and I can still see them

flash in August fields like a crop of traffic lights
they flare as hay-bale paparazzi or

floaters in the humour and hang
careless in seasonable decadence

so I’ll pass from the frigid, processed air
and join them in their closeness.

No buzz but a minor hum coming from the
moment’s luminosity and then they’re gone
making good on thunder’s empty promise.

In the glass I glimpsed her eyes
they flitted over dappled cream,
but expectation became a cloud
and so fogged her face from me.
I glanced about my forgone haunt
of candy stripe and lino check,
a board on which I could predict
the movements of her interest.
You cannot taste frozen chocolate
or those rainbow splinters.
Yet she was snared in naive thought
and caught in coloured winter.
They make it all round back you know,
But actually they don’t.
They make a cracked kaleidoscope,
its sight is skewed and bitter.

The mossy stitch of a concrete quilt can
cosy and tuck the gummy road. And should
we scrawl upon patchwork step, catching
skip in the slabby hopscotch ground.
Receding upon the pavement scalp
its riprap etching on our skin
where boredom breaks the cracked grins
left to trudge through polished tar
an asphalt crypt of broadbent muck.
But were I tried to argue stint
when waning wild and brittle at the knee
with a wary shuffle of aged feat?

Nevermore would you see
Flagstones on a seasoned street.

Am I in there with the crowd?
That stagnant incense and heavy heat.
As he watched a deaf head bowed,
Am I in there with the crowd?
Vision narrowed by infringing cloud.
To shelter outside on the moonless street.
Am I in there with the crowd?
That stagnant incense and heavy heat.

Can you hear my troubled mind?
So heavy the traffic inside my head.
To which my Christmas had resigned.
Can you hear my troubled mind?
The imperfect vessel he had designed,
inclined to follow and be misled.
Can you hear my troubled mind?
So heavy the traffic inside my head.

Did I believe I was there at all?
Back against the stained glass glow.
A slimy trail, pathetic and small.
Did I believe I was there at all?
Prayer as an orphan call.
Into the night, my prayers I throw.
Did I believe he was there at all?
Back against the stained glass glow.

People in the sand
The tide, it heals the fresh scars
And leaves their salvage.


                                                      ­             Hard the seagull flew
                                                            ­       Gale working against her strife
                                                          ­         No, she does not move.


                  Hoary lines appear
                  The angler of Creevy Pier
                  Battling the sea.

Keep your kids away
from the  feathered rat.
That mangy, tarry bird,
living off their scraps.
That carrier of disease,
protruding as a cyst.
Its mangled talon clenched,
a red and permanent fist.

Iron hulled intruders.
Objective mystery.
Walking a confident strut,
name marred by history.
And is it not a pity?
most will not see,
an oily rainbow as it turns its neck,
and overlook a granite diplomacy.

Is it not something to admire?
Unique confidence?
At the feet of the bread-man,
only intransigence.
With ideals ignored,
can they not behold its spirit?
When a grey bird remains,
Why do I see its merit?

I often pondered why we wore our studded boots,
When the mud was impenetrable with morning frost.
The same that misted our breath before our eyes,
that made our ice cube toes and splinted fingers,
that made us unable to tie the laces now lashing at our shins,
that made us dread every kick and made every catch distress.
There was no warm-up for our extremities, only pink S.O.S.
The probable pain of the individual,
With every pass lacking distance and every shot off the mark,
My belief was then what it is today,
that some are just not made for it or any other.
And now when I watch, I wish I never left.
To feel just once the joy of contest,
when the closest I can is...
a drink on Sunday afternoon.