Underworld

Getting up and Getting old – Metropolitan Line graffiti.


The morning ferry drifters. Drifting atoms
Through sweat-grafted tunnels – crust,
Dust, molecular particles of below air.

Stretched silence grating on matchbox
Stubble. Stillness to shudder in the monotonous
Jogs and bumps of axles and metals on jostling track.

Unsteady flicker-lighting shows black and white
Film behind x-ray eyes, fidgeting… unravelling in rolls of
Stills: decomposing thoughts, something stale and fraying.

Some eyes are rust-shut in sleep, perchance they should dream.
Dream: that forgotten state of innocence, of unsnibbed,
Unclasped freedom; of fertile grass and imaginings

Upon that mattress of springy greenness; and the scent of damp
Earth, and thoughts bred of timeless hours: oozes of tangerine juice,
And youth, and lips…. A spluttered hiss cuts across the

Commute, but soon the lazy, etched foreheads roll and pivot from neck hinges once more,
Slaves to the blustery mechanics. Some taughtened sinews seem to
Fight the buffet of steel on wheel on suspension, and the lure of

Suspended reality – straining not to succumb to the hypnotic rhythm of the
Underworld River, where oars cast ripples into cave-echo, and rock and
Haul and drag souls further up and deeper in to the resonance of darkness.

The Timeless Hour

This is the timeless hour
When the sweepers drive by;
When, in the swathe of this chrysalis
Two bodies learn to breath together
And whispers make sense of the world.

~

Those sweepers of a timeless hour,
From a bygone hour
I can't quite place.

~

Deeper in to the resonance of dark.

The Rise

Mine was the right of two, a light apiece showing dimly on the
pillow and casting its almost beams on the Micky Mouse clock on my
side of the wall. An early picture of mine: ‘The Golden Hind’ – I had
proudly rolled in elastic – lived on the chest by the door; the needle
and pine scented drawers were embalmed in life-old Times’ Sport pages, browning
on the fray. A wavering Tottenham in seventeenth – nothing changed there.

You awoke to the bee keeper’s buzz of the kitchen TV,
and enthused clunks and bells of the ripening-brown microwave;
there was always ‘four-across’ crossword chatter, scraping butter,
the dragging of protesting red-cushioned stools, crunching toast from
the rack, and then that smell from the larder: every manner of
marmalade, biscuit, rioja, cake and sell-by-date.

Quest

To slosh these toes in this rock pool,
countering the heartbeat of waves – wishing
I could douse in watercolour some
gnarled sketch-leaf, and puddle it with the
fermentation of sea-softened thought,
one step further on the wanderer’s quest.

End of the line

Sudden waking –
like plunging from Narnian water;
the sandpapery bite of his larynx
tearing me from the blur.

My eyes scanned unfamiliar
peripherals, narrowing;
my bladder remonstrated for
lack of planning.

He walked me to the exit as I
focused the cap of my right converse
along the platform’s central ridge,
feigning sobriety.

He spoke like a man in his domain,
asked where I was meant to be…
his eyes unfocused – opaque – then
settled, arriving in thought.

Jump in, jump in, he said.
Ever ridden in the front
of a train? It’s a whole
different world up here.

Transfiguring my brain to sponge,
I balanced my head on the glass in a
state of absorption – edging forwards –
a glint of moonlight on the tracks.

Homeward

Numbness fighting the frazzle,
an o’er-brimming buzz of static,
and flexing-remembrances of breath.

Limp features draped in the underworld’s
mirrored canvas; hair: rustily greased,
like cooked wood – scaly, slick; a smack
of her rose-bright lipstick in the eye of the
double-glass. Hunger and survival sense.

The first dawn when theatre-dust fell tonight,
mixing with the dew of the lights, drizzling
baptisms, accepting our trading of vows.

The split-moment came, as he said it would,
when I stood there – between thoughts –
soaking it in, with the thrill of stillness in the
epicentre.

Down from the cliffs

Drifting fog:
the deft taunt of smoky wings floating the
aquamarine: its cloudy, bluey-green iris.

Here, down from the cliffs, where the water
encroaches:
treacherous-embracing glugs, hostaging rocks.

Dawn, dusk; inhale, exhale – breathing
light on this task immemorial: time’s
artistic etching of the details.

The accident of my back on this rock:
watching the rock pools dilate,
sensing the rise and fall of the diaphragm,

tabernacled in the vastness.