Mermaid

Shore, shore, sure
drinking salt water
and trying to rhyme
swimming between green
making ale from kelp
and sawdust
and watching things be made
and waiting for an accident
to happen
-accident me please-
and diving without trying
and drawing
a line
in the sand
and running through locked doors.

Waiting

I am waiting as the night comes in waves,
Waiting as soft foot steps home-hurrying pass,
Waiting as imprints and half-prints are hushed to insect hum.
And under the cover of a willow’s grieving bends
I wait and watch the water swallow dark.
The day is over-worked and aching for bed,
As longest day is done,
As autumn begins her distant beckoning.
And night creates such colours to make the most of her short call.
And through the budding curtains I see the boat.
Rounding the bend with low slung heaving,
The water giving smooth progress for the sweat.
I cup the paper ship in my hands-
All folds and creases binding her will to mine.
I am holding time and my breathing,
But Battering wings shatter the stillness;
A birds sets flight from above me
And in the vacuum left behind,
A feather falls with rocking motion on the updraft.
My hand shoots into the twilight,
Pale and vein mapped as paper written in blue ink.
The plume is young and dark, traced with fluff.
It crowns the ship and tickles in the wind.

I am waiting as the oars drag onwards,
As the slop and slide rises
As my ship begs to be cast off,
I am waiting for the air to pass,
I am waiting for the birds to lift.

And off, off, off on the glass surface,
Barely a bend as she sails,
Night-feather flickering, like a candle in reverse.
And the rower sees the messenger cutting her path towards him.
And the rower scoops her sodden form just before the wreck.

But I am nothing to the night.
Off down dark paths and over clipped lawns.
As the rower reads the letter.
And too changes course.

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.