Declarations.

I've lost the ability to think in days.
I measure time only in hours and weeks,
since there's so rarely a lull
and so many don't sleep.

There's no escaping this place.
The lights are always on outside, and in,
lighting drunken avenues
from which delirious declarations
spell out the evening's sin.

Somebody, somewhere, is always awake.
You're only a text away from a glass
of whiskey shared and secrets spilled -
for everybody knows that
3 am's the time to show your cards.

You're rarely truly alone.
So many have identical weeks,
and they're always around to help
since there's so rarely a lull
and so many don't sleep.

Campus.

I drank myself into campus
looking for some bar someplace
where there are vacancies
and awful liquor cheap enough
for underfunded students
to indulge their way
into the medical centre.
A tall man with blonde hair
stopped me on the stairs
to confirm that I had just arrived
to make sure his wisdom was required
"These are the best three years
of your life, go make some friends"
was all he said in husked monotone.
Looking beyond the blonde stubble
of a face glassy and scarred
I witnessed a piaza of sober intolerance
and I have never been so glad
to not find some bar someplace.

Heat.

A bead of sweat jogs down
my damp forehead,
heading for the tip of my nose.
Where there was once "pit stains"
there now lies quarries.
The bus is tightly packed
as well as stuck behind lost
and foreign lorries.
I experience the deepest envy
I've ever known,
as outside the window
a small child holds two ice lollies.
What greed! What fiendishness!
To flaunt such a gift before us all
in this Public Pressure Cooker.
I'm not ashamed to admit the smile
that turned the corners of my lips,
when I saw those frozen poles
melt, and slide right off the sticks.

Summer.

There's a sweating, balding man in front.
It's not that I'm offended by his choice to occupy
half of the pavement by holding his elbows up
like some Wild West gunslinger;
I am offended by the fact that he does so
with a hugely knowing and chocolate glued
grin that guns down my patience.

There's a woman stood, with a pram.
The pram must remain side-on with
the pedestrian traffic so that her offspring
might watch us duck and weave;
kayaking through the heat and crowds
in this little seaside paradise which is
long overdue indifference.

There's a jovial family crossing the road.
They move at the pace of a diazepammed
slug that has just realised it really has
no place to be at all;
whilst staring, bemused, at the cars that honk
and the drivers that raise their hands in protest
"Hey! We're walking here".

There are two parents shouting nearby.
I don't know what their children did but
they were dragged to the alley beside my house
so the adults could rabidly declare their disdain;
a small hand is raised and the shouting pauses
before one of the kids urinates besides my garden,
pissing away my patience.

Cog.

A rusty, clockwork Cog rolls
from some nigh forgotten shelf
onto a carpet thick with dust.

Years of wear render its roll
uneven and unbalanced
as it traverses the living room.

It wobbles once, twice,
and then falls onto its side
as if to gaze upon the ceiling.

And this saves its eyes
from seeing the Grandfather clock
tick-tock as though the Cog was still inside.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Tick.

Shark.

Last night I dreamt that I angered a shark so greatly
that it willingly threw itself onto the beach:
sacrificing its life for a chance to bite me.
It thrashed and bit until there it lied;
stone-cold; still; and beady-eyed.
I decided to take a picture,
before it was swept away by the tide.
(I only realised it was a dream
when I noticed my phone had died).

Absolution.

A hundred sweating, writhing bodies
stamp their weekday laden feet
upon the tainted deck.

The felt between throbbing speakers
and hordes of lust-drunk stompers
shakes as though it may tear.

Indiscriminate forget-me-nots are
handed out with grins and hips
to those whose memory blurs.

Cups of midnight absolution
are desperately sought by
self appointed social paragons.

Pulsing lights from a ceiling unknown
pour out their golden net and catch
two hundred wide-eyed glares.

And in the darkness they may move
like fairytale monsters under cover,
but all stay still once caught.