Today I strode the road from my abode to the ocean.
Straight to the sea it takes me East.
Normally a feast for the eyes,
Today I walk while the sun does rise.
The blinding light so bright removes my sight
I listen the world.

The wind through the leaves of the trees,
A world at ease.
The breeze interrupted by the wheeze of a car.
A scar to mar the aural vista.


The world’s heart pounds
With the sound of my feet on the ground
A jack-hammer resounds abounding,
Interrupting the surrounds abruptly,
Like a palpitating heart getting a defibrillator restart.


From the trees birds whistle melodies
I hum thirds, fifths, the harmonies
Vibrato offered by the bees,
Percussion from the choppy seas.
A horn rings out, commuters shout
The rhythm and the tone falls out,
Slow, fast, sharp, flat all about.

As my feet reach and breach the beach,
Far enough from the road’s screech
I hear the ocean preach in a speech to me.
Whispered accents on each word.
It sighs defeated, it feels mistreated
It sings songs not yet completed
But interrupted by man’s conceited need to sing his own song.
The wrong song for too long.

The sun falls behind a cloud
Removing the shroud,
Showing the crowd singing so loud on the shore
I close my eyes to block them out,
To listen as the world’s song sprouts
I want the ocean, the trees and the world to shout
Loud enough to drown us out
Us petty little runabouts.
We came here last and we won’t last if we try to move around so fast.

Stop.
Listen to the breeze through the trees.
Dream dreams of a world at ease.

… On a bustling street,
              she shuffles her feet,
                     her eyes hold a desperate heat,
                               eyes darting, discretely charting
                                    a line through the crowds that are parting for her.


In a world of abundancy,
         she sees redundancy.
Where waste is rife,
          her life breathes new life into the rubble
                       from a fickle society’s burst bubble.

Her world otherwise grey,
         she colours her day,
                 collecting, affecting
                         what the world has thrown away.

Single-mindedly transfixed, her target mixed; decayed, disused, no longer affixed.
Refused, unused,
        discarded, unguarded;
              all detected, all collected, all recycled, all respected.

Debris she chases, through a sea of down-turned faces she paces.
Those faces think she disgraces their spaces
           but she shows no emotional traces.
She just fills her cases.

She kneels on a cold floor, search no more, search no more. Through a broken window comes dim light, from an oncoming night, passers-by dare not look in from disgust or from fright or sorrow for her plight. Her face covered in feeling but not for the walls peeling nor the ceiling that leaks, nor the floor that squeaks under a carpet that reeks and is torn and frayed in pieces arrayed in front of her.

She kneels on a cold floor, surrounded by more of the same she collected before. Old cushions: tattered. Plates and platters: shattered. Curtains in shreds, ripped clothes, parts of beds. A massacred lounge, wallpaper scrounged. A casual glance at the floor shows a junk-yard and no more. To her it’s ethereal, much more than material.

Her eyes focussed, near to lust as she begins to adjust her treasure, saved from the dust. Within it she trusts.

In her eyes pieces glow to her, in her eyes pieces show to her, a beauty known just to her.

She kneels on a cold floor with a purpose like none before. Within her scrapheap dominion she needs no opinion she fears no ones minion. She knows the beauty she seeks, the beauty that peeks through the grime as she tweaks, the beauty that speaks to her. As she sews it grows and shows and she knows what was once dispose is becoming her rose.

She loses no pace as the last piece of lace delicately takes its place; a tear of pride slides down her face. Her complexion ashen, knowing her passion has brought fashion from a discarded ration she lays down on a cold floor, search no more, work no more.

Daylight breaks, sunlight that shakes and awakes her. Her eyes fill with elation as she clothes herself in last night’s creation. What she wore before goes on the floor where lay more creations from nights before. She heads out toward the sunlight.

On a bustling street, she shuffles her feet, her eyes hold a desperate heat, eyes darting, discretely charting a line through the crowds that are parting for her …