Falling...

That’s the easy part.
It’s beyond your control really.
Like a mat being pulled from under you.
Or tripping over something as obscure as a centimetre rise on the pavement.

And as you fall, you can’t deny the excitement and exhilaration as your heart quickens.
Adrenalin courses through your system in a feeble attempt to heighten your reflexes and realign your senses...

Just so you could perhaps stop yourself from getting hurt.

But you also know that you can’t fight the laws of physics and the fact that you’re not a cat.
So you can’t help but submit fully to that moment of defeat.

Now you’ve slammed into the ground.
Tasted dirt...
And rubbed faces, knees and elbows with the harshness of the earth.

If you do get up,
would you be ever so careless again?




I’d watch where I was going if I were you.

High on the O2:
Red Rossopomodoro, Wagamama,
and on the bus shelter, Marc Jacobs,
and again higher,
Habitat,
then Metroline moves past.
It's the 113
to Oxford Circus,
and the 13 to Victoria:
Thrilla Lives On,
shouts the slogan,
while National Express has
All Set For Take-Off.

They're gone...
It calms
empties,
nothing much
just the red lidless eyes
of cars
two, three, four dozen pairs
hover
over the asphalt road.

Where...
where am I?
Ahhh, yeah,
in the Oriental Star,
the road seen from a table and stool,
waiting
for food.
Where have I hailed from?
My lover's womb.  
No, no
NOT THAT!
The North Star, yes:
A pub on the Finchley Road,
Where Tottenham beat Liverpool 4-1
A pyrrhic victory!
Over a couple of beers.

Warm years, and tears.
A sense of place,
a home, a nest,
Receding in the traffic
Of a busy road,
Waiting on noodles.

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
Splayed raw on the pillow:
A bowling ball of led.

Eyes shuttered
mind can’t help but think how opening them will sound:
A screeching nails on chock board wail echoing through the empty grotto of your right eye.

Not to mention the rusty needle digging out
a radioactive maggot through your right ear: slowly
Boiling simmering festering carelessly twisting on the way out.

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
One was all it wanted.
One beat to go through the skin of the drum
Until you realize the drum is your heart and still: you see a pierced drum and
Its pain becomes your pain. a violently pierced drum and again

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
A led balloon gyroscope looking down at the bathroom sink.

No, I don’t think I have a migraine today.
Nothing a pare of  The darkest cheep sunglasses,
Six  or eight pills of whatever,
And a couple of cigarettes can’t put a dent into.

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Sound off, left (left first because it hurts less) right. Left,
Right, left