A whimpering, whispering colour shy, fogg’d scene.
Twilight cars commute a slow steady stream.
There and there in each a player, a pawn.
He’s eating a sandwich and she’s, well, withdrawn.
All eyes twitch forward, a glance and a fidget,
numb of expression,they are, oh, so with-it.
Instructing and clumping buys and sells,
rising, slumping and closing bells.
This washed fog’s a ghost but for purpose or sight.
Windows with pockets of living-room light.
There and there again a daughter, a husband.
number 28 has had an ok day
number 44 has kept the bailiffs at bay.
All home for dinner and to watch the tv,
to shout at the soaps whilst drinking a G&T.
Talk of the weather ‘ooh…what a terrible mist,’
then cheer themselves up watching Schindler’s List.
Through the cloud and up and round the corner still
where the workmen finish for the day and cease to drill.
There’s one alone in cafe light,
uncomfortably submerged,is he loosing his fight?
With his tide taken friends,and their pissed up futures,
he is too old for the trends and too indifferent to tutor.
Eating sweets that changed their name,
in some elaborate and important marketplace game
he sits and ponders stroking his chin,
resentful of the young, the ambitious and thin.
This fog should be gone tommorow
and the day may be clear
but for those trapped in it, horizons will be just as near
There some pass an on-flickering lamp.
Swamped in the sub-urban nightglare of mistrust and greed,
a conflict of gods and misplaced good deed.
The Towers at Babel fall in triumphant horror,
what now holds for them the future, tommorow?
What of her and her fetish for rubber?
What now for him and the pride of his blubber?
That one wants to come out, about being gay.
Will he? Won’t he?
No. It would ruin his girlfriend’s day.
This obscured and blinded colour shy scene.
Is one day in the life of this washed-out, old, has-been.
