today that pull toward sleep but not-sleep—

rest

the coppice crowns a slide of green
—so very English,
as the seven-four-seven strikes a stave against the blue vault;
a tabula rasa for a new century’s march,
but the sky remains silent to all that effort
to get from one horizon to the next,
the day comes round soon enough anyhow
—so very now

the jet plane’s pendulum of time-equals-money
centres me and any thoughts I had of making
that walk back to Warwickshire and adolescence
vanish to be replaced by equations

of distance over time,
the number of seats for the lucky few,
the price we have to pay
to escape ourselves…

Two white French girls
smoke a Turkish hookah
and listen to three black
African Americans sing rap
the hookah bubbles
the mobile smacks out
the emasculated music
their mouths relinquish
their language to the jam
the pencil makes no sound

The clouds scoot
orange and pink bruises
across the skyline
like the weather can’t wait
can’t change quick enough
it’s October already
and we’re still not done
with summer;
cling to every humid evening
hang around every last beam
of the too punctual sunset
 
In the club the beats begin
but it’s too early; no one’s inside
One of the French girls coughs back a dud ****
the bar door creaks
the traffic whispers
with bored engines
the beats want to sail
off with the clouds
but are kept echoing
between four walls

Time overcomes space then
the beats are cut
a siren wails, a seagull screams
the traffic streams
the awnings rock little trees
my concrete idyll

……

Two Spanish men arrive
and have a three-way
food talk
with a mobile

A piano begins
to sound out
Aquarium by Saint-Saëns
the beats return
then stop
a door opens
a door closes
the hubbub returns
 
The Spanish settle on
an Argentinean
the French girls switch to
a chantress

I digress

[Humorous Intervention]

The seagull rendered sculpture
of discarded fast-food containers,

(early, Sunday morning leftovers
from Saturday night’s punctured remains)

the locus of which gives the value of
a ******, good night out.

It is left to the curator of found objects
to enshrine their cultural worth.