Moving backwards

 

Sit in wait.

Bus late, or never

to arrive,

Community

deprived of a life

outside its confines.

Is this progress?

Are we

moving backwards,

or are we even

moving at all?

It feels

like the station walls

are closing in.

 

The elderly gent,

who sits

on the steel bench

opposite the scribe.

The highlight of his week

escape from

the torment of loneliness,

that clouds his mind,

a quick pint imbibed

and some joyful chat,

now sits alone

in his 1 bed council flat,

drinking himself flat.

 

The late-shift mother,

wants to get home

to kiss her kids goodnight,

they have school tomorrow.

Now walks streetlight-deprived

pavements, each step

cemented in fear.

To reach her destination,

which sits just feet

from a disused bus stop,

Is this progress, or regression,

travelling in the wrong direction.

Safety no longer

a part of the ticket price.

 

Decked in NHS blue,

the young nurse sits

after a 12-hour shift,

eyelids drift towards the moon,

almost in prayer. Saved a life today,

no time to unwind.

She shifts in her seat,

shift in mere hours,

just wants to sleep.

Is this too much to ask? Is this progress?

 

Is this progress?

Passengers

on a journey to nowhere.

Where bus stops lie,

for no buses stop there.

Chewing gum daydreams

 

Is this the high

that you wished it

would be?

Alone on

cold paving slab,

asleep at three thirty.

Waste bin life,

as the litter

of your mind

sticks to the

chewing gum daydreams

that you once sought to find.

 

Is this what you wanted to be?

Did you dream as a child to see

the world through a chemical haze?

The detritus of days surrounded by

McDonald's cartons piled high,

to miss so many sunny afternoons

gazing absently at the ground.

 

Or were you blindsided by life,

like a ten-tonne truck

crashing through

your days,

did the hope

slowly drift away

when you could

barely make ends meet?

 

And if you were to

greet your younger self,

would you tell him to pour

his heart into

the things he loved,

or would you tell him

to put away

the childish dreams

and focus on the factory,

like you did,

so many years before?

 

Laid out in a gutter,

laid off just another number,

a statistic, laying static in the tragic

remnants of life, as feet walk idly by…

Navigator

 

I am a ship

sailing

across the stars.

Drifting those

cosmic waves.

I could float for days,

but I need a navigator

to guide the way,

for these seas are vast

and I lost my grip

of the map

some way

back.

 

Could you steer

us to new ground?

A far away star

where hope can be

found flowing across

the planets that surround.

So we could

embark upon a story

lifted from a daydream.

I’ll keep us safe from

the waves and the beasts

from the depths that would

feast on our memories.

I just need

some directions. Please.

 

Could you be the navigator

reading the star chart

that leads to my heart?

It sits on alien sands

awaiting the right pair

of safe hands

to hold it tight.

But if you listen

to the steady echoes

on these stardust nights,

the sounds

of the stars and space

you'll hear its beat

start to race faster

as you get close.