The lights change
traffic crawls past
the discount stores
the charity shops and tanning salons,
off-licences and bookies,
the barbers and Greggs;
Another bleary-eyed morning
drab and dreich,
the cityscape wears the weather
like a mourning veil
pulled tight across its face;
Shuffling off their coils of ennui
in dribs and drabs
the denizens answer to
the day’s tolling bell,
unprepared,
looking the worse for wear.
We know nothing worth knowing
and were it worth knowing
we wouldn’t even know that
we didn’t know whether or not it was;
Knowledge is the sum of all
the emptinesses gathered in a vacuum,
we articulate acquired knowledge
in the way those blind from birth
might describe colours;
We grasp at phantasms
and draw shapes with our fingers
in the still air of a morning
on a battlefield occupied by silence;
Our role in history is as relevant
as that of dust mites in
the Palace of Versailles.
Corteged coffin-like
commuter trains call
at Kirkgate,where
from unwashed windows,
faces tight as
drawn curtains,gaze out
at the snow lying
thick as mattresses
over the gap-toothed pavement,
hiding its treasure trove
of detritus,origin unknown;
A funereal sky,
certain of its purpose
snares and guts expectations
of the lacklustre kind,
the kind that carries
shoehorned stick-figures
scurrying across washed-out
vistas endlessly reflected mirror
within mirror,within mirror,
as the day progresses,
snow deepens and optimism
is put back in the
cupboard alongside
rarely seen rainbows.
Certainty crumbles into dust,
the meaning escapes from our lives
like air from a punctured balloon;
the last of our threadbare hopes
tears asunder,
leaving a gaping hole
that we patch with
remorse and desire,
repairing outward appearances
so that others might
see us differently as we
in turn see them,
and they too are torn;
and so begins again
the slow waltz of beggars,
prying coins from the
feeble grasp of Tomorrow’s largesse;
undermining its certainty
until certainty is gone,
and with the coins we’ve pried
we purchase our next
punctured balloon.
There he sits every day,
whiskey and cigarettes
daytime T.V.
shoe leather’s gotten thin,
needles in the hallway;
the accoutrements of ennui,
perhaps.
There they sit every day
images of unattainable dreams,
missed opportunities,
bad choices
limitations;
the architecture of bitterness,
perhaps.
Badlands breeze
blows hard, blows mean
spitting time back in our faces
burying our dreams all over again
beneath oceans of dirt;
We waited for better days
that came and went,
while we were barely awake
ghosts of a hundred factories
ghosts of a million Tom Joads
marched into the long forgetting,
where places and names are tossed away
with the crumpled old maps
they were written on;
And the new geography
with their digital maps
don’t mean too much to anyone
their places and names are nowhere
anywhere near here,
Here the Badlands breeze
blows hard,blows mean
where all we inherit is
an empire of emptiness
a kingdom of sand.
We waited so long for answers
years went past like trains in the night
lights on, heading somewhere;
Back at the station ticket in hand
we waited till the memory of our
waiting decomposed in a lights out
going nowhere rustbelt town;
Our prayers for answers wore out
in the empty spaces between pews,
our hopes got outsourced somewhere else
where lights were on and years passed like trains;
We wait in line,
we observe the rituals
with diffident demeanour,
and the ticket in hand tells us
there are no answers.
Opportunities like seagulls in flocks
have flown by ,
precious moments and chances
whipped away suddenly from our grasp ,
sent whirling skyward
into ethereal anonymity ,
revealing an emptiness
of purpose
exposing a hollow shell
cracking at the seams ;
whispers shall be our deliverance
but not for a while yet ,
and the mists of morning
accompany us with their dull cadences
which we often mistake for unwarranted approbation ;
there is neither failure nor success ,
neither defeat nor triumph ;
our gilded shields and splendid spears
have rendered nought
but an inheritance of tears ;
Somewhere in the drowning stream
as the Sun sets and encroaching night
begins its long slow asphyxiation
of what we thought was our day ,
a solitary flower is placed carefully
on an unmarked grave in a church yard
at the edge of the coming Storm .
Did they offer you a thought
for all your pennies ?
did they want your gold
in exchange for a goose’s egg ?
did they swap your silver linings
for a sky full of clouds ?
Would you trade your last dollar
for their word of honour ?
Do you keep all of their promises
in a jar ready to use on a rainy day ?
and all of these things
they saw but they did not see ,
they heard but they did not hear ,
and they knew ,
they knew it all
but still they tried not to know.
Footnote: –
” The Big Short ” both novel and current motion picture release are about the events that triggered the Financial meltdown/Banking Crisis in 2008.
The Scene ;
Shuttered windows
and a locked room ;
floors garnished with
detritus from Ages passing
in front of you ;
their cortege of phantoms
of possibilities withered
into ineradicable regret ;
their bouquet of bitterness
rendered inert on your palate
that tasted too long
too much of their vintage ;
your hurried departure
on which so few commented
has now regressed into dormant
ephemera sheltered in the exile
of inaccessible memories ;
and somewhere in your future
a once familiar hallway echoes
with the cadences of your absence .
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