I wrote a poem on a bus
but to hear it you must
climb to the top
of the bouncing metal stairs.
  
Slither snake-like
past the rail
and sit
on the rainbow nylon bench.
  
I'll be there
at the top of the bus,
reciting my rhyme,
written as we ride along,
past shops and houses
with musty nets
and peeling paint
on dingy doors.
  
There's the old woman who
lives in a house no bigger than a shoe box
who had so many children she didn't know what to do!
But they've all grown and flown now and she's all alone
with no-one to talk to but herself.
  
Look at that kid: grimy smile and mischievous eyes,
skateboard-scuffed knees,
darting out from the roadside.
Screech!
As we stop and angry words.
The kid glances back and tosses a vee
leaving just his smile behind.
  
The bus lurches on
at a snail's pace and stops at a stop
for a giggle-girl-gang
to chatter up the stairs
with a clatter of feet and voices:  
weekends and boyfriends,
music and laughter.

The bus trundles and sways
past shops all shuttered,
old folks gathered by doorways
talking about people
dead and forgotten ...
except by them.
  
Into the town now:
a river of road-rage
as our bus ambles onward
toward car-parks and markets
and rat-racing shoppers
  
And stops by a brown pigeon-stained temple
of public philanthropy,
a gift from a long-dead civic leader
and now proud home
to dogeared tomes of PC persuasion.
  
Our bus, like some Trojan horse,
disgorges its riders
who spatter and scatter
like rays of dawn light
to shop till they drop.
  
So, just me and you seated
atop the steel stairway
and you say to me sharply,
“So where's your poem then?”
I look at you strangely:
“It's happened around you,” I tell you quite curtly.

It’s 11:49 p.m.
and we’re still driving.
That’s all we’ve done.
The needle hovers
lifting and landing
upon the E for empty.

We’re content with
the smoky upholstery
that buoys our curvature.
The mechanical shelter
that trundles beneath us.

He’s rubbing his chin
where his shadow grows.
His ruby eyes on the road.
Knees pulled to my throat
I breathe and savor constellations
wondering how they might feel.

Stubble and midnight starlight
is how the next day begins.

Summer 1986 Sunday 5:30AM

Misty morning in Malibu.
Seagulls stitch the sea to a subtle
silver sky. They sputter stridently.
Each elegant gull hovers effortlessly.
Entreating each other. Echos bounce
off the sound of the surf into eternity. The screeching of many a
soliloquy akin to silence.

I sit on the pier. The water before
me washes onto the staccato legs
of tiny waterbirds who wander
in and out of the surf. Little
windblown ***** of ecru and grey
wool. I worship in the womb of
the great goddess ~ nature. I wasn't to know the Creator was watching patiently...

6:30AM
I make my unhurried way up the
pier to my car. A cheap but
comfortable convertable. Nobody
walks in LA. I punch in a tape.
Don Henley. Boys of Summer.

I take PCH up to the incline that
takes you from the beach. Pushing
the pedal slightly as I slide by the
colossal bleached cliffs of
Palacades Park. There the homeless
sleep under the benches dedicated
by friends and family in
rememberance of loved ones.
Small plaques attatched for
posterity.

My hands are on the steering wheel
at 7 and 12 o'clock.I look at the cast
I wear on my right wrist. A token
of rememberance from an angry romance. He and I parted
respectively, if not at all
respectfully. I drive.

7:00AM
Venice beach. Not yet boysterous.
But never boring. The young people
(and old) still bundled together in bed. Saturday night hangovers will
be had by most of the denizens of
Venice beach boardwalk. A grainy
eyed few wander around abstractidly. Shopowners enter
their buildings, their storefronts
almost as small as booths. Graphitti
and giant works of art grace walls
everywhere ~ Jim Morrison and
Venus in workout leggings much
in evidence.

I smoke my cigarette and drink my
hot coffee carefully in the open cafe'.
I consider the eyefest of the crowd
that will congregate here to enjoy
the clement weather.
The cacophony and the clamor.
Touristas and Los Angelinos alike
drawn In by calculating vendors
and coyote souled street performers.
I look forward to seeing the
non conformity usually. But not
today. For now I sit in the quiet cafe'.

Venice beach. Vulpine. Vacuous.
A strangely vunerable venue. The
***** and the beautiful. The talented and the ******.

A street performance pianist trundles his acoustic piano on
casters out onto the boardwalk.
I ask him if I may play. He looks
at my cast doubtfully.
"I can still play..." I tell him.
He ascents and listens thoughtfully
as I play my compositions. He really
likes them. I ****** the ebony and
the ivory with insistant fingers.
The smile on his face is irrepressable. I smile back and we
flirt in self conceous, fitful fashion.
Time to leave.

9:00AM
Radio is on in my car now. A cut
from the musical Chess. One night
in Bangkok makes the hard man
humble... I like the driving beat.
I'm going up I-10, a single blood cell
in the main artery that brings life
to the flesh of this mamouth town.
Traffic is tenuous. A boon here in
this conjested city.

I drive to Fairfax and Sunset, where
I lived with in a tiny one-bedroom
apartment with my mom. An
ambitious actress. I an ambivalent
artist.

Sunset. The Roxy and Whiskey-a-
Go-Go. Cartoon characters Rocky
and Bullwinkle casually cavort on
the top of a building. Billboards
as tall as the Hollywood sign. The
street of broken hearts for many
an actress -slash-model. They
wander about on street corners
looking haughty and haunted.
Waiting for who knows who to
honk. Their dreams have flown
away like the exhailation of smoke
from the mechanical lungs of the
Marlboro Man. Schwab's drugstore
and diner. The place where some
famous starlet was discovered.
Delivered into the arms of the
Hollywood machine. I opt to go
to the Sunset Grill.

11:00AM
I'm walking down Hollywood Blvd.
Perusing shops and persuing
pedestrian pleasures. Everyone
talks of the star-studded sidewalks.
To me they look tarnished and
filthy. Stars from a sultry smog
laden sky come to earth. The names
of some of the folks honored on
them I don't recognise.

I'm here to view movies today.
I'm definitely not going to
Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Been there. Done that. Gave the
very expensive T shirt to
Goodwill. I look around at the
proud and the plebian. The pedantic
and the pathetic. No prostitutes
out yet that I could see. Probably
toppled into bed to sleep
(for once). Deposed kings
and queens of the monarchy of the
night. The homeless hobble along
with their hair matted and askew.
Shopping carts with stuttering
wheels de reguer.

A couple of tourists with Izod shirts,
plaid shorts to the knee and deck
shoes sans socks gaze in a shop
window. It's borded by tarnished
and faded silver garlands... tinsel
Christmas tree.
"Want to buy a mood ring today?"
One of them querys his buddy,
laughingly.

I find my small theater and enter
the air conditioned lobby. I purchase
a soda and pass on the popcorn.
As I enter the theater's modestly
plush, dimly lit cocoon sanctuary
I notice very few patrons are here
for the matinee. GOOD. I finally
watch the premiere product of
Los Angeles. Movie after movie
slides across the screen. The callus
morally corrosive corporations
conspire with the creative to produce
the culmination of many art forms
in one. Cinema.

LA. Languid. Luxurious. Legendary.
Rollicking, raunchy rodeo.
Seaside city. Sophisticated. Spurious.

SPECTACULAR.

8:00PM
I wend my way up Mulholland Dr.
Another tape is playing in the deck.
One of my favorites. David + David.
Welcome to the Boomtown.

I pull over at a deserted vista. From
this viewpoint I can see the city
spread out like a blanketfof brilliance. The gridiron of LA.
Glitzy and glamorous. Generating
little gods and goddesses. A gigantic
gamble for the disingenuous and
gouache. Tinsel town. Titillating.
Tempestuous. Only the very brave
bring their dreams here... or fools
rush in where angels fear to tread.
All but the fallen angels. They thrive.

Oh! If this place could be bottled it
would be such sweet poison. I
look up at the auburn sky and back
down at the breathtaking panorama
The metropolis that is LA with awe
and angst. I carefully stub out my
cigarette and flip it irreverantly
toward the lagoon of lights.

I get in my car to drive home.
Home?
Could this imposing, inspiring,
impossible place be called home?

Well. Home is where the heart is.
And I live in the heart of a dream.
This is the city of dreams...

CITY OF ANGELS.

Soul Survivor
Catherine E Jarvis
(C) 2005

Even if

nightmares, cats, leaders, ***, beauty, hugs, feelings, melodies, technology, communication, life, abandonment, longings, mornings, electronics, kingdoms, followers, humiliation, darlings, hyperventilation, depression, Alonedom, ghosts, trundles, Hell, gravity, tickling, hearts, unicorns, twins, education, lost ones, ink, medications, pavements, thoughts, souls, suicide, walls, hatred, alcohol, oceans, soles, music, misspellings, transportation, buses, guts, Heaven, time, attractions, *****, hands, blindness, organs, dreams, bodies, distances, understanding, currency, energy, love, spaghetti, contentment, happiness, tears, fire, people, oxygen, tongues, children, peace, death, papas, zombies, homicide, blood, kisses, drugs, families, caffeine, mamas, space, parchments, baked goods, economy.

didn't exist,
I would still wish you would

But you don't anymore

so nothing matters.

Plaridel

Plainclothes this Saturday under the brusque heat – trees burlesque from shedding,
ripping orchestra of motorcycle: this one – too blatant to perform, to shrunken to
notice. What if I never reach you?

1.1 Crossing

There is an unrelenting transaction of birds in the surest sky in the surest day.
I can hear the rumbling of thunder behind its natal. If when found, discard.
It is easier this way unless inclinations are definite: the trance is to come,
shorthanded. Consider this day your being spared from.

2. Toll

I remember the identical traverse. It was when I was unsure of my birth. My father
had recounted and numbered how many slopes and trundles along the way when homeward
is turbulent, angled at such pace which could have given me another face. I have always
found it impressive that a person can wait for too long and waste away in hours that seek
no relevance when the daily is diminished.

3. Balintawak

You said that behind the marketplace is a dense crowd scouring for loose change. You wanted to supply them all with your adequacy that was rife and deft for sure in the turn of your hand almost a finger-exercise: that is your skillset. It will rain soon but the heat refuses to decline. You thought of the cumbersome bodies washed away by flood, and how at times, you remember them being randomly stacked at your doorstep, eroded by some wave.

3.1 EDSA

Space we have no need for want under a terminal day fully etched like unwanted visage making you remember something that was your flagrant disregard when asked about how
your day went, about a miscarriage of justifications, at work when facing absurd hours wishing to break away from that was our common bond – the long and dreaded silence because it made us always question what are we doing? Who are you? What for? Knowing for sure when to being but to end, indeterminate.

4. Familiar curve underneath a vandalized lamppost

In the console you pressing, discarding gravity at some point, managing to draw your way into and submitting to not knowing how to get out of, sealing an immediate sepulcher. We borrowed minutes, ran like fugitives when asked. An external shadow an intrusion so we had to cease for a moment but in the depth of our silence, somehow continued.

5. Entry to your home

Perfumed your garage was with autumn, or vegetation you said was your aunt’s prized possession. That it was my fault I did not turn you off as a switch is meant to be killed from the moment of discovery to dislimn the image and leave everything to study as specimen is meant to be dissected.

6. To go backwards*

         The only way home to where you were and I, scattered

Grey blue asterisks against a wet valley of hills
clutching boulders for *******
crags and crannies filled
with luscious flower bursting in bloom
summertime
solace of scenic breaks
the bus trundles around corners
through to Milford Sound
majestically beautiful in its isolation
and magnificence
the lupins soar like coloured points of ecstasy
into shades of pink purple blue
taking in the breathless landscape
as if it all owned the place
forever.

Riding back through the ice packs and awe
of blue waters and spray mists of inspiration
we sit silent and absorbed
cameras unable to take in beauty of depth
but a small window of memories
that capture our time and place
in this wilderness.

Leave it alone for the lupins.

Author Notes
A journey through Milford Sounds-World Heritage site, New Zealand.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Dusted with gold, colours wheeling,
Threads reaching into a sun,
Precious handwoven rugs from Mumbai,
Individual, divine, only one.

A foreigner orders a carpet.

So a carpet graces the road.

On a throne made of barrows and money,
But a hand stops the vivid-hued load.

Covered in dust, wrinkles stealing
Irreplaceable youth from his bones,
Worthless mendicant soul in Mumbai,
Stretches out towards hope with a moan.

A dollar could take him to life,
As his cup stretches out for some bread,
Yet, the cloth priced more highly than life,
Trundles past, and it leaves him for dead.

The ship chugs through horizons,
With its costly woven load,
Whilst a bag of bones expires,
In the dust, beside a road.

First the signs and then the noise -
Insistent, honking, grinning boys
Announcing City snow-ploughs

What's this raucous clarion call,
This four-note trumpet klaxon?
It's the boys who tell the world
To move its Ford, Corvette or Datsun.

A snowfull truck on squeaky chains
Creaks off to dump its ***** crystal load.
And four more trucks parked right behind
Sashay one notch along the road.

Truck number two clanks up beside
The blower which spews salt and snow
Into its built-up box beside.

See, grinding now, a baby plough,
With red-faced driver tucked inside,
Trundles bundles of frozen stars
Into someone's shoveled drive.

While upon this clanking ballet
Lacy snowflakes lazy drift
Lightly swirling fluffy piles
For moving by tomorrow's shift.

muteness
this dyin' out which
the fay of sleeping trundles

is

lurid


it
stings deeply


very drab
and doesn't

its shoulders
jeweled
gleaming

most
its muscles
sore

andthe

sloping crease
of its hips eat

the timid easy fingers of dawn

Along the country lanes of England's sleepy hills
eyes glint in the hedgerows,
and tree limbs thrash in the dark.

A school bus trundles around muddy roads,
past a graveyard surrounded by brambles
and a weather-beaten oak tree in the middle of an empty field.
Its charred branches lie by the gnarled trunk
the aftermath of a thunderstorm.

In June a sickly heat rises over boughs
of rotting elderflower and towering nettles,
dark blackberries are protected by tangled masses of thorns.

The woods stretch out; dark, hushed, in every direction,
until they are woken by listless car headlights.
thin and ghostly, the trees quiver in the face of feigned daylight.

When the evening glimmers day slowly turns dead
I peek at my watch sweet six in my head
Walk in windy sprint in cheerful childly gait
To reach home in time meet you sweet mate!

When the few hours seeming like weeks
Roll out prolonged till they reach six
I pick up my bag leave the tedium behind
To reach home in time my sweet mate in mind!

When the day unfolds bland time slowly ticks
The clock acts too lazy to reach the magic six
I hold on the belief the evening won’t be late
To ferry me in time to my waiting sweet mate!

When nothing seems to tick except my weary watch
As it trundles into six I say thank you very much
For though you ran so lazy reached six at any rate
To tell the time is ripe to rush home for sweet mate!

When each hour passes mundanely alike
Work drags slowly painting the day prosaic
Past its burned hours beyond the toil’s sweat
Chimes the magical six it’s time for sweet mate!

The car whose paintwork
claims that the end is near, trundles
past my window as I look across
the ebbing amber of civilisation
before me, which I have become
perversely accustomed to.

The Arabian accordion has
ceased to play, in the streets
where the masses move as one,
buttoned up to their necks in
a futile attempt to escape the
inevitable wrath of circumstance.

The dusty silhouettes across
the bar have all finished their
drinks, clasping onto glass hollow
like the minds of which the
harsh winter rendered strongly,
to be alone is to feel nothing.

The air hangs thick amongst
the stone walls of the houses
of the slowly suffocating people,
the ones with the stained ribbons
in the hair from almost six years
ago, clutching on to particular thoughts.

And the oriental lady plays
with tins outside my door,
while I peel back my nails in
search of ink, all the time thinking
the sleeve made wet by nostalgia
is nearly rolled up, all the way back home

Every evening I look forward to sleep, thinking I might meet you in my dream
Every morning I wake up with a tinge of hope you'll be there when I wake up
Every twilight holds the promise of your hand to envelop mine
and every passer by trundles their own loves,
hopeful,
hurt,
stuck in the electrifying cycle.
The lines in my forehead are deeper
but so are laugh lines near the corners of my mouth.
I'll throw a party and hope to see you down the hall,
I won't come and talk to you because I know you'll be waiting for me outside.
Hand extended,
smirk positioned,
jeans the color of peeling paint;
Time to wake up

Mouse claws on plastic; a scratching sound,
A small pallid face on a merry-go-round,
The wheel trundles on unstable ground
As the empire falls, a fresh king is crowned

Head spinning; hair thinning,
Revolution by minute is no beginning,
And now the man behind the lattice is sinning,
It goes around, and around
Swinging, we come around

Mornings follow familiar dreams
Afternoons clink with routine and caffeine
Evening curtains rise to the same static scenes,
And night rings out the strain of the machine
Round and around
Evergreen; never aground

Our scratches on the wheel grow loud now
Two more eyes swallowed by the shuffling crowd now
Despite strain, the steel walls unbowed somehow
By a thousand pallid faces beneath a thousand sallow shrouds
We go around, and we go around
The mice remain humble: the king has some proud vow
It comes around and back around
The world keeps turning; we all fall down

I.

On the surface easily gliding,
  are my hands. I keep on the table
  an ajar carton of cigarettes. Then slowly
  becoming in my pocket, taking form of a hand,
  a crumpled cinema ticket when straightened,
  ironed by plainsight, walks with lines, the end credits roll lasciviously like an estranged lover
   whose face I can almost touch.
  When let go of closure, air thins and I move
  secretly with fluency. This is how objects
  escape my grip.

II.

  In front of the eatery, a transit.
  I had a dream once in a depthless sleep,
  a figure in stilts studded with guilt.
  The face next to me, disquieting the music
   of currencies, naked in sound as the truth shaved
   like a beast. The nearby tarmac resounds with
   another throng of absence. As a substitute
   for beings shackled to duty,
   the oncoming woman assumes theirs,
   borrows their faces of dreariness and ***** a thousand times like white sheets harassed by
   the wind through opened windows.

III.

    Define space as a venue for collision.
    Say when a red-haired woman straddling
    a duffel bag and myself confused as a peripatetic.
    She ascribes her presence to my footing
    and from where she left off, I take form
    of her expired movement.
                     Found strangeness is that space
    is what happens when remembered. But hold no
    bearing and rear contrivance,
     trying to be bold by definition -- space solicits
     the in-betweenness and then transmutes
     an occurence,
             say the volatile shape of a hand when
    clutching and releasing, the fugitive manner of
    feet when avoiding puddles, the unsolicited
    reticence of a troubling question.

IV.

            A man carries a take away and is now
     amongst the populace, waiting under a shed,
     housing a familiar language. Home.
    
      But first, trivialized. Haggles with the cab driver,
    trying to transact a being angled towards home.
    They agree to a fault, money's perfume clinches  the fingers and is given to a calloused hand.
             Air once stale, is now succulent with the
      resonating memory of a child's excited laughter,
      and is now presumably waiting behind a gated
      home. Like the palm of the hand, the number
         of times the vehicle trundles within
     the nearby avenue is the force it enkindles
        with rest. He is home,
     unloosens his clothing. Like a fine specimen
          freed from a vitrine.

(20 minute poetry)

Yellow lines
stand behind them
mind the tube train

over and over again
the parrot squawks

it talks of dangers
electrocution
warns of imminent
prosecution

don't feed the birds
are words just
words to me

keep clear
let passengers by

why don't they try
to be
anything other than
the
same old
me, me, me?

pass me an anorak
there are
rainbows
set in the track

and a *** of gold
down at Old street.

A blonde who's seen
better days
plays harmonica

it's stairways

we fall
or we rise
the sight of poverty
in many eyes

and the tube trundles on
the parrot longs for greenery
I long for some scenery other
than this.

and a carousel ride
around which I could
hide
these thoughts

fellow passengers look blank
they've got the tube to thank
for that.

bewildered in a wilderness
looking for union or
congress

a meeting of minds.

John the postman
is a cheerful chap
although
he once hurt his back

He brings the mail
dead on time
whether it's wet
or whether it's fine

He trundles along
in his little red van
and he's always there
to help if he can

Here trees blossom with plastic
Sweet wrappers garland a mossy wall
Empty crisp packets whisper like leaves
And jagged daisies of broken bottles
Scatter the grass

Here a woman,
Rose tattooed
Skin like the bark of trees
Her eyes tin-cans
Trundles her shopping cart
Over catkins of paper cups

Lager, the colour of sap
Leaks from her hands
Her mouth is a bruised petal

Bring out your dead cried the man with the cart.
The red cross on the door.
He trundled on and on.
Calling and shouting.
A cart full of infection.
Off to the plague pits the dead were carted.
The cycle completed, the cart trundles on.
Bring out your dead cried the man with cart, again.
(C) LIVVI

tomorrow has enough joy,
if only we are able to see it.

tomorrow has enough love,
if only we are brave and reach, to embrace it.

tomorrow has sorrow
if we choose to face it

tomorrow has anger
if we choose to engage in it

tomorrow is today
with different clothes on

we much choose;
be it
friend, foe or stranger,
we sit opposite,
on the train,that trundles
ever on,
toward life's
final destination.

OG

'...og! '

You command
the language

&
it

obeys you.

Providing you
with a dog.

A sleepy dog
who when he hears you

wakes up
trundles over to you

slumps
at your feet

& then
goes back to sleep.

You
the Queen of Words.

'Ahhhh...og! '

you stroke
the word

& it obeys
your every whim.

'Dog! '
I say.

He opens an eye
&...looks away

as if to say:
'Who's him...then? '

Ahhhh....my little cave girl
I love

your little explorings
of the tongue

and how
the world comes

when it is bidden.

'Dada! '
you pronounce

& I
too

come at once
tied to

the invisible string
of your

voice.

I hear a dog whistle in my tin-ear
higher in that morning wake up listen
followed by some sleeping memories spent
to spark life back into bed bode on bier
head up leads first spinal twist-spin leg's weir
feet on this floor balance grav'ties decent
trunk set motion pivots towards day's ascent
close pass window to view, to shape, to hear

there on tree tips chick'dees flit-fly blithely
rain drops para-****** atop old smoke
starlings fidget to worm's earthly writhing
legions' insect swarm free onto blossoms
dandelion yellow peak out of sight
as this morning trundles spring tides rise

-cec

I’ve made something that is perfect.
Mistakes I’ve made, hearts I’ve broken,
It’s not my desire, it’s not been worth it
This twisted toxic machine has chosen

To refuse all corrections
And to make any new updates
I’d bash its head in, if I could,
But it’s not really my fate

I wish it weren’t, I’ll overcome it
But foolishly, it trundles on
Taking hope and opportunity
And leaving or making them gone.

The black pick-up trundles by.
Every late evening the same
trek along these quiet roads
is hated by an unseen driver.

On the back a bottled reservoir
of milk ebbs and flows like ice
on some red planet faraway.
Tonight the telegraphed heat

of coming day means he trickles.
Then all along moonless lanes
he rattles home empty, longing
for rain and the lure of firesides.


Tony Noon

OG




'...og! '




You command

the language




& it obeys you.




Providing you

with a dog.




A sleepy dog

who when he hears you




wakes up

trundles over to you




slumps

at your feet




& then

goes back to sleep.




You the Queen of Words.

'Ahhhh...og! '




you stroke

the word




& it obeys

your every whim.




'Dog! '

I say.




He opens an eye

&...looks away




as if to say:

'Who's him...then? '




Ahhhh....my little cave girl

I love




your little explorings

of the tongue




and how the world comes

when it is bidden.




'Dada!

you pronounce




& I too

come at once




tied to

the invisible string




of your

voice.

From my window
I see swirls of green
Mottled branches reaching up
A black crow swerving
To take its perch

The down and up of
Chlorophyll hills
Horses in coats
Standing like guards, steadily

Parallel pathways of jeeps rubber tyres
A duck and a drake floating in silence

Solar panels look up to the stars
And sheep huddle, waiting
For something to pass

Tall firm pillars
Driven in mulchy brown filth
Support travellers
Across the mixed Cornish, Devonish waters

The train trundles on
Towards the East
And I wander towards
The place I call
Home

Hurricane Maria,
With rancor in her stride,
Swept ‘cross the ****** Isles.
From her, none could hide.

Smashing Puerto Rico
She turned it upside down.
Forced it into crisis mode,
And made it a ghost town.

She struck right quick and hard
To whirl, and twist and toss.
Cut water, food and pow’r
As folks wept for their loss.

Maria spun casualties
Among those near and dear.
But time still trundles on
Tho life is all but clear.

Midst such devastation,
Who knows where to begin?
But the people must rebuild
Regardless the tail spin.

oil-drum braziers burn
late into the Berlin night;
spikes and mohawks
warm themselves
in a sultry august heat.
it's an urban patterned jungle
of spray paint and tags
as the S-Bahn trundles
high on its way, above
the clamour of 1991.
I'd only just arrived
and my small provincial eyes
tried not to flicker
or shy from the sights
of those underbelly vistas;
was it deprivation or freedom,
necessity or choice, to stand
around a burning barrel late at night?
my host assured me
we're perfectly safe
as long as I listen to
her expert advice.
And then we arrived,
leaving the car outside
we got through on
the guest list
and so started our night.