Sleeve of time

 

Now this may be wild,

so, fasten your seat belts,

accept that what you see

may not be reality, as you know it,

and that where this leads could be

a dream fashioned from stardust

and insanity.

 

If you look to your right,

as the carriage glides

a little too high off the tracks,

and your stomach lurches

two stories below,

 

if you look, you'll see

a page becoming

real.

 

A formless ideal

moulding itself

out of the clouds

and the breeze.

 

Wave.

 

That’s me.

The narrator, the creator

of all that you see.

 

For in this world,

I am the magician

of paper,

the word-filled

silent inventor.

 

Worthlessly creating love,

that seeks an owner,

but the heart donor

is occupied by another.

 

She sits, staring the breeze.

The one that planted the seeds

that formed these trees

that all bear fruit

that tastes so sweet.

 

For the real magic lives,

in all the stories that I breath.

Not in the ones that I weave

from the remaining threads of me.

 

But there are others,

I am but a mouth,

and I can barely speak,

for the orchestration of

our cosmic annihilation sits

just feet away from me.

 

The bringer of grapes

laced with poison

to feed the ill,

the master of manipulation,

the coming storm

and the already lost cause.

The one who launched

the moon into orbit,

and the one who

set the sun alight

with just a flicker of anger.

 

And in this place, they see not

what is growing at our feet,

they see only ants.

Whilst I see the beauty inherent

in these two-legged beasts.

But my voice is silenced

by the ones that shout,

my voice is rubbed out

like a chalkboard

 

erased

with the sleeve

of time.

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…