The train is a mechanical snake,
its hiss occasionally scrawled
above the grating of its own

movement as it cuts through
the smear of graffiti and concrete
and waste and dry bracken.

A single voice, “she was the
third fastest girl at the gala,
yeah she was really pleased”,

the voice enveloped by the
drone once again. The train
entering the tunnel.

The Financial Times lies on
the plastic table, the pages loose
from bored ******* bears the

headline: sacrifices required for ambitious goal.
Eyes trace the same paragraph over

and over, drawing nothing from
the coldness of the type script.
I think about conversation but my

tongue lulls in my mouth, dry,
and my mind wanders between
small talk and meagre pleasantries.

I stare at the man across from me for
what seems like minutes, knowing that
he knows I watch him, analyse him,

but there is no fight or pretence, only the
tired apathy and reluctance I know.
his arms cross. His eyes close with half sleep.

Television glows
blue upon my skin.

My head lies on
the static of radio

and the electric
of the streetlights

blaring through my
window keeps me awake.

The red digits of
my alarm clock

grow less vibrant as
the grey sun stirs

to the accompaniment
of the jubilant birds

with their repetitive
song which hangs

like these vacant walls,
holding me.

Summer rain.
Like splinters of glass falling
through green shades.

Gathered leaves are swept,
the mist pulls into the station.
Hands in pockets

The first snowflake settles
but soon melts away.
Unnoticed.

Walking home. The smell
of wild mint by the stream.
And sunsets.

on the platform
a girl drops a pink tissue
and it lies there,
all scrunched up like a rose

Like in a scene from a film,
where the camera pulls back,
we see a head resting in the mud,
glassy grey eyes stare out
as if searching beyond the trees.
Grey hair crusted with muck.
Soil specked lips, bluing and sluggish,
parted from the final inhale
exhale process which has
failed like a broken clock.
Stopped heart like a rock.
Skin, liver spotted and birth marked,
cold and graying like silver birch bark,
A brown overcoat covers arms
splayed like branches, caught
and underneath a vague sheet
of russet leaves which have
since fallen in the breeze.
Insects crawling from beneath them
climb to inspect the unfamiliar mound
still to be discovered by a passerby.

And in a house not far away a wife looks at her watch
And she sits in front of the television,
And aware that something isn’t quite right
her stomach clenches up like a fist.

Dead leaves, a dying tree;
silent in a tattered hat,
pausing in his quiet task,
reading poems of T.E. Hulme.

The soaking ink
The doppler-shifted music
The refracting light

The gravity pulls
The magnetic-norths repel
The sticky vacuum ether

A falling stone
A drifting feather
A stationary wind

A silent name
A population disinterested
A common, universal secret

The sharp middle
The undulating plane
The slowly rising soil

Sensation and intuition
Without and within
Together in massive isolation.