Station sentience, a life sentence

 

Rushing thoughts collide in station sentience,

static fizzles crackle across the mist of a faded dream.

A memory lost in a kiss, a whisper left on the bus, arriving

in a new sentence.

 

And weaving between, broom in hand,

leaves of a story, a ghost amongst ghosts,

rambling the concrete and steel scenery.

Scraping chewing gum from station seats.

Wishes for greenery, to be free to amble in

the fields he wishes to see. To be a leaf on the breeze.

 

A sent text left on read, panic strewn youth

scratches his head, was it something I said?

A glance from a smile, a whispered word to a friend.

A look again, before face churns red and studies her feet.

The frequent traveller on the night bus to nowhere,

smiles at nobody. And nobody sees,

as they are too busy focusing on the floor.

 

So many formless poems unwritten, a silent thought

flows in, then whispers off again.

The smitten couple, the girl who wishes

to be home, her kitten in her paws, scared of

the bark of men in the howling town with their

fearsome claws sharpened in the dark of day.

 

The pregnant pause

 

Waits holding her belly as her bus arrives late.

In the hushed chaos of the crowed crush, her thoughts

peck in and out, a passenger to joy and fear,

her journey arrives soon, as she watches a previous

life disappear into the rush.

 

And on the benches the bleary eyed, sits cradling

can of amber, like a baby in his grip, and he surfs the

felling of tree across the concrete sea. A moment of his

own intensity, a moment just a moment of sobriety.

A thought of where he will one day be, a memory, before he

hugs the rest and throws it to the floor.

Litter life fleets in and out of his drowsy eyes.

The ghost sighs as the broom floats by.

 

The tears. The smiles. A heart that sits

forlorn, unpopulating the lines that form,

on the screen of his mind, picking

the sweetness, creating flowers from

thorns and thistle vines.

 

The bus sits awaiting, but the poet sits under fluorescent

awning, no rush, for words form only once the stars quit

falling in delicate sprinkles over his eyes.

 

And as the fading light of station nights sigh,

a song of the lost and alone, the wanderlust

and the found, lives collide in rushing thoughts that bound,

like waves and stone, and the lights blind his eyes.

As the view clears and ghosts vanish from sight,

every story, a part of his life.

Now left in the storybook of history that he writes,

as the broom of time brushes stardust from his feet.