Palm down, flat with the card underneath. He is buying a small

container of pasta, the pasta is not nutritious and barely satisfying.

Into the station, a clock and also wretches. Some are happy, click-

clacking around, lush. A fake smile catches the worm, she is so tired.

They are all tired but there is Floradix. There is coffee coming from all

the pores in every wall. From every epidermis there is coffee. And time,

all the time. Compared to these skyscrapers and the men who built them.

In the lounge, and hating the way it sounds. Sitting room, Mum would

have insisted. Tapping away, good luck. Stuckist in flannelette.

There are motivational quotes for this I bet, gone viral like a fascist.
There will be a programme for this, a way to re-enter the station.
There is a yoga pose called not depressed, it costs eighty quid at

least, have you tried it. Follow your bliss in an arts admin position, you’ll

be around people: not complex, and they can’t see your eyes.

Back on the walkway there are hundreds of unshackled minds. All with

purpose. A lady nearly knocks my flapjack off she is so full of it. Nips in.

Busy and alive, in her groove. Emotional freedom is an excuse, and it pays

really badly. Also, do you want to be remembered for being tired. She was

always tired! The pews erupt into laughter, they are fond of how tired I was

all the time. Always tired! Just the way she was, changing the world by

loving people. Writing some poems that a hamster made his bed in.

One day the crutches just stop working. It’s ok as we are not chimneys nor

romantic enough to be a drunk anymore. It has lost its mystery. One whole

packet of Nice biscuits is guilt. So now I hobble around on cocktail sticks

stopping only for a single robin. More truth in a single bird than anything I am

told by anyone, more sense. Or a dog’s eyes. I crouch and understand the

dog. His head is solid and my hand does not go through it. Or when a child

speaks to me I can make them laugh. When they like me without trying.

Or I could buy a Graze box and browse products in Boots, they used to hold

such promise. All the potions and stinks, now useless. I see the package

design in vector and people decide to have a different colour hair, how

are these decisions made. People represent themselves and I am lost, can

only see the way they move, with bravado or hesitance, a sudden faltering.

Trying to get past you, winding up to make speed, to their futures on time,

toward the olden days clock with no lovers.

Brace to expand the only magic space

left to us, a place of folk that exists beyond

money. I love money! If only

I had some, or the other thing they all

want, called exposure, or big ears.

Disruptive in itself, the voice amongst

ads, pride in my artform, graffiti all

over the banal- nice, I like it. But

also, why does that vast nation get to

finger our last starry trench with a yup,

filmed on metro sets of faux-reality?

Imagine yourself surrounded

by cameras, your words tripping out to

potential emptor, shoehorned hard in

to fit the brief. The future etc! Saving.

I would melt with the absurdity of it,

my self droning on about shares or family

when I have neither, not quite the way they

call it. Grubby poets with their terrible

clothes and outsider faces, spun

to gold in terse intermission. Lol

at the Night’s Watch, volunteering

to keep the tiny slice of light alive. We

never did it to make ends, but for love-

to transform right and organise.

For we exist elsewhere, always. We do,

time bends. I am useless in the mainstream.

Here are some words that fit ok. Spokey-

Dokeys on your wheel, for recall. Sorry

I cannot sell them. They are already yours.