Flat like a deflated manta ray
Hugging cold concrete sea bed
I’m left to entertain
The leaden
Thoughts occupying my head
Gazing up through azure avenues
It suddenly occurs to me
Time ebbs and flows like [trapped] water
And light refracts just like memory.
Stripped to nostalgic caricatures
Future skewed, past distorted,
Clinging to scattered, static, pixels,
Air and solid ground aborted.
Held breath slowly kneaded out
– Watch the bubbles effervesce –
Each a plastic pocket of potential
To be detonated among the rest.
Eyes heavy with chlorine
And the malaise of brittle, sleepless nights
Concrete organs matching concrete floor
Bloodied by the battle of those existential fights
One-nil
One-nil
One-nil
Peripheries alight from
A self-inflicted napalm strike
Oxygen escaping
Draining with it, life
Cough, gasp, heave wet lungfuls
Involuntarily buoyant once again
We came close this time, at the bottom
To finding a satisfying The End
Surging to the surface
I beg for a few seconds more
Like the spaces between waking dreams
I’m drawn back to that free flowing floor.
Paper Street Diaries 