Where?

Where has all the silence gone?
Words fight through tired ears,
City-rumblings grind,
Ear-drums involuntarily vibrate.

Where has all the space gone?
People float past paranoid skin, bones,
Warm, squishy bodies dance,
A guy in a raincoat grazes an arm.

Where has all the truth gone?
Posters shout lies, half-truths
Once dismissed, now believed,
Lest we should have to think for ourselves.

You Elevate Ants

There's a bridge that
Reaches its thin finger
Over The Thames,
Graciously, selflessly,
Elevanting ants like me.
I'm alone, a speck in the eye
Of this diseased city
Breathing in quasi-fresh air
Blowing across muddy water.
I pause, turn sideways and
Lean against the silvery edge.
A sky full of promise
Of brighter times looms
Over building-block streets.
Skylight, not-quite-sunlight,
Echoes underneath pinafore-grey irises,
And for twenty-six seconds
Stillness graces my thoughts.

Subtext

Boy: That poem you wrote - it's about me, isn't it?
Girl: (distracted): What poem? Have you seen my sunglasses?
Boy: On the side. You know, that poem, the one you wrote last week...
Girl: Oh that one. I was pretty pleased with that.
Boy: Yeah... it was cool. [pause] But you didn't answer my question.
Girl: What question? We should go now, I'm meeting the others at 2.
Boy: Ok, but the poem - did you write it about me?
Girl: What's this about? What makes you think that?
Boy: I, er, um...
Girl: We're postmoderm. You can think what you like, a poem is a pile of dust. It can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Boy: Oh, just forget it. I just thought maybe... [sighs]. Anyway, let's go.
Girl: Maybe what? You're being really weird today.
Boy: Never mind. [pause] I just thought that maybe you thought about me when you wrote it, but it doesn't really matter, it's cool.
Girl: You know I think you're great, don't you... I really respect you.
Boy: Thanks, anyway, it doesn't matter. We should go.
Girl: Yeah, come on.

sorry

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-nineteen service to Clapham Junction is delayed by approximately eleven minutes. We are sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-nineteen service to Clapham Junction has been cancelled. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you.

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-thirty-nine service to Clapham Junction is delayed by approximately seven minutes. We are sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

I am sorry to announce that I have been delayed by approximately twenty-seven minutes. I am not sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

I am sorry to announce that I am permanently delayed today on the twenty-first of June. I am not sorry for the inconvenience this is causing me because I've managed to read four chapters of South of the Border, West of the Sun by Murakami and frankly that's far more interesting.

Crowds

Cautiously
you walk
through casual crowds
towards
me.

I haven't
noticed you
yet, you smile,
thoughts full of
wrapping soft
arms around
warm skin,
conjuring away
the space
between
us.

In ten seconds
I'll be,
we'll be,
free.
Together and
free.

Tandems

I cycle through the morning sunshine, my presence displacing currents of warmth that glide past and kiss my cheeks. Twice daily I peddle this route over tarmac, gravel, cobbled mews streets, floating plastic bags. The traffic is backed up, stop, start, stop, start, engines purring and spluttering, but I don't care. My two wheels squeeze through and past and carry on up and round and down and round and past and in and out of the cars blocking the road. I'm confident and full of my own thoughts - alone underneath the snail's shell guarding my consciousness. The morning commute is my favourite part of the day. I wake slowly and generously, carefully - no sudden movements, don't panic, no sudden movements, "women - remove high-heeled shoes!" I'm less of a liability now that the days of caffeine addiction have decided to remain in the recent past, they're happy there, and I'm less edgy.
One part of the route sees tyres gliding, arse firmly on the seat - for one road only - the recently tarmaced, not-yet-speed-bumped cyclists' dream! Rubber meets seedless raspberry jam smoothness and for a moment my feet stop doing the hard work and I fly...
I do my best thinking on this road, I respect it so much. It's smooth and calm and curious and never blinks... hang on, that's a Suzanne Vegas lyric... I mean, it's smooth and solid and dependable and clean and always there and great in the rain and makes my life, well my cycle, more fun. Who knows? it maybe even contributes to my mental health! Perhaps doctors should prescribe smooth-road-cycling to the depressed folk who clutter up their waiting rooms. But hang on, I was a waiting-room-clutterer once, and I know how little motivation I had... tandems! That's it! Tandems are the way forward, all of the benefits and none of the responsibility.

Solidify

He is solid. Brooding. Deep. One of those guys who believes in other people more than he believes in himself, which, rather than making him an eternal under-achiever, merely serves to grace his outlook with a humility that’s becoming increasingly rare in the inner-city. Occasionally, he wavers between courses of actions… which compliment to give, which girl to invite to the sell-out play he was organised enough to snatch tickets for before the ink was dry on the flyers… but mostly he knows what he wants. Getting there used to be a race, he was up all night, fingers stroking keyboard like an omnichord. Things have changed now. There’s a polite dance through and in and around and behind and over those who have the fortune of being in his way. There’s a polite “excuse me, sorry”, and he’s at his destination, the burrs on worn grey trousers compliments, lessons learned, observations made. Nothing is wasted. Everything is here.

In your words, you’re awesome man.

5.47pm

It's 5.47pm and I'm a dead weight at my desk. My body has morphed into the chair, we are one and aren't gonna give each other up easily. I sigh and flick off my monitor and desk lamp for the night. The week is passing through me, wave after wave smashing over my head, the tail end of one of which I'm lingering on. It's chock-full of adrenilin and is powering me forward. All thoughts of my personal life are surpressed beneath organisation's poor cousins - Urgency and Productivity. The dryness in my eyes reminds me that I haven't slept well, and I blink and rub my eyelids with a floppy hand. Eventually the chair and I part. It's acrimonious but we've been so close these past few days that I can see the ties between us. Some distance will do us good though. Ten minutes in front of the mirror and I'm transformed. I wipe the day's grime off my forehead with a tissue and reapply much-needed colour onto a pasty face. A stranger smiles back at me. It's gonna be a good night.

Affluenza

I read today in the Observer Magazine, that despite being richer than our fellow Brits in the 1950s, we´re much more likely to be miserable, experience a major depression, have a mental illness or develop cancer. How depressing! I belong to the school of thought that believes there are a lot of unhappy folk out there, which is why I inwardly glowed on seeing the beaming smiles on a pack of Hare Krishnas in SoHo last night (to be totally correct, I heard them long before I saw them). The article quoted stats galore - Americans are more likely to be ill than those in all other developed nations in a period of 12 months (26%) - for example. "Why is this, I cried!" Why was my grandma more likely to be content with her tin bath, no inside loo and the experience of eating out limited to fish & chips every other Friday? The thing is, my grandma is an optimist, born and bred. She sees the best in every situation. She´s pleased when it rains because the geraniums were getting parched, she can make a Spam sandwich taste better than anything from Pret, she had a mastectomy and never once complained, "What do I want with breasts at my age!" she said, incredulous at the familial concern cluttering up her normally tidy living room.

You see, I think I know why this generation is miserable, we're fundamentally insecure pessimists who continually fail to see good in others or in most situations that come along in everyday life. We expect too much. My grandma was happy with a pork chop and apple sauce, a week camping in Cornwall every summer and two kids in clothes previously worn by five others on the street. We strive to buy houses we can't afford that we're too busy to enjoy because we're working overtime to pay for the mortgage. We eat at restaurants with menus we can't quite afford because we're too proud to go to the cheap Italian on the corner. We pay for things previous generations would have laughed at - cleaners*, dog-walkers*, shirt-ironing and kitsh furniture from Heals.

This week, I for one am gonna try not to live like a statistic. I'm going to sit by the river and drink cheap wine from a plastic cup, eat a jam sandwich and watch the hazy river floating by. I'm going to take my shoes off and feel the damp earthy coolness between my toes. I'll think of my grandma and I'll be smiling.

* These are examples meant solely to illustrate my story. I have neither, nor a dog for that matter. I'm more of a cat person anyway, and they can look after themselves.

Giantess

Some days I see a lot of small blokes.

Creeping up

I´m always surprised that despite being home to more than seven million people, I regularly bump into people from my past in London. I´ll be minding my own business, power-walking the Piccadilly/Jubilee line interchange at Green Park, when a familiar walk will flash past, grazing my vision, forcing me to blink with surprise. This happens maybe twice a month, and I´ll probably speak to one of those people. The conversation generally goes one of two ways. The first sees us screaming, we´ll wrap our arms around once-familiar shoulders, look closely into eyes, now wiser, and subconsciously put 110% effort in re-engaging in a relationship. Vital stats are exchanged - the whats, wheres, whos and hows of this city. Numbers are punched decisively into mobiles, and we´ll part, strides now bouncing, hair flicking, eyes shining with memories now floating up through the murky dirt of the tube platform. The second is awkward, fleeting. We feign interest in boyfriends long past, convenient flats with off-street parking, the dream job with the dragon boss, the love for the city. One of us will crack first, the phone comes out of the bag, eleven digits are begrudingly entered onto an already too-full SIM. We´ll never call each other, we both know that, but we´re British and polite, and gosh, "I´ve got a train to catch!" and she´s gone.