A Dream Misplaced

And thus I return
to this familiar corner
this unfamiliar space
unsatisfied, unfinished,
unaccomplished.

These days
they died an untimely death
with the dreams we thought we knew.

Our inheritance has already been usurped
and squandered.

I found
that after all the times we shared
in the shelter of each other's arms

that paradise was not blue.

The Morning After

This city will not bend
it will not break:
its spirit will not shatter
like the bursting forth of tin can boxes
that tried to pull its life asunder.

We are a conglomeration of improbabilities
Held together by the fabric of our indomitability.

Not rain nor shine,
Neither mud-slinging
nor explosions
will hold us ransom.

Tomorrow will never die.

Traveller on a Street Corner

The stuffiness of the afternoon
was dissapated by
a promenade in the rain:
rambles under a generous umbrella
turned inside out.

I saw you standing at a street corner
waiting for the wind to take you somewhere
as the drizzle on your parka
mingled with the confusion of foreign words
sliding off the streets like water.

Those blue eyes:
they apologised for everything
even though the universe had not yet transpired.

Tomorrow I will seek them out again:
only they knew of of what it meant
to be standing at the foot of a slope
waiting for the rain to recover.

Torrential Spell

The morning rain shut out the sun in defiance:
I couldn't tell today from yesterday
or yesterday from a tomorrow that never came.

The afternoon rain hammered on in silence
As I sat behind a windowless wall
pittering and pattering on plastic keys in its place
As sullen as its own insistent pace.

At night and in evening time,
It drowned out the sound of my own voice and
the noises in my head
bouncing its tiny bullets off the transparent rooms that separate us;

I resisted an invasion.

I knew my spirit couldn't withstand the shock of the world outside:
I had fallen to its torrential spell
Even before the nimbus had raised a cry at dawn.