London

As I fell through concrete skylines

In a rush of reflected glass,

The beat slipped from my heart’s drum

And split on the pavement to shards.

I watched it before my landing

And felt the hungry city sing

As it gained a new pulse to chime to,

To join Westminster’s bell ring.

The water’s so cold beneath bridges

And the current’s too strong for regrets.

Once decisions are made for the plummet,

The only direction is death.

A girl was waiting at Southwark,

Was rapping my beat on her chest.

One of a thousand pieces

Spat into her palm where she pressed

It deep inside her own heart-line –

Until then unbroken with hurt-

And I felt her beat echo my hollow

As I lay on the bank in the dirt.

With my face coated in city scum,

Ends of revelry caught in my hair,

I peeled myself from the flotsam

And staggered my way up shore-stairs.

The sound ricocheted through the tunnel,

Like a taunt propelling its pain,

She stood at the end, I the other,

Her eyes full of hunt and the game.

The restless city within me

Was a mess of spasming light.

Like swarming insects with blood-lust

That feed on those lost to the night.

With a flick of her wrist I was falling,

In a haze of sickening scenes.

Her laughing filled every atom

And The City strained at the seams.

As the cracks opened with the descending,

Sounds leaked out from the core;

Pounds of hearts soaked in Thames water,

Hearts broken and aching - at war

With their own lack of loving

And the lack of the city to love.

I could feel my hollow chest throbbing

And longing a beat to my blood.

The sound rose from inside me

From pavement and river and bridge.

It shifted the stagnant pools gathering

In my veins, now yearning to live.

And the water reflected the sunlight

Below Southwark where I found her dead.

I pushed it out with the tide-flow,

It sunk with a heart made of lead.

The City continues spin

And the bridges continue to call,

But my own beat kept its own time

As the bodies continue to fall.