SONG FOR A TOWER BLOCK

SONG FOR A TOWER BLOCK

SONG FOR A TOWER BLOCK

steel dragons hang in the sky
fly across the invisible sight lines
between your grey termite tower and mine

the fifty-foot high smogline community
of kitchen window recognitions
silhouette definitions
of arms
and no face
lacks the well-starched
grace of the ground floor
lace curtain crowd:
the evening pace of lights on
blinds up
welcome to my kitchen sink soap opera
cop a look in at number forty-five
and don\'t you feel alive when the wind rolls up
and leans against the side of the building
like a cider-soaked bus stop preacher?
That\'s when you reach your full potential
as a member of this mechanised system of control -
those concrete prisons
they sap your soul
they crush your
crush your
they

...have you got a roll up?
he pushes his shoulders into the wind
more for comfort than stability
and pulls down the remains of a wool cap
against an upwards look
at a granite-thick sky

six-forty-five
erase the sounds of rush hour engines
and time could have stopped:
plastic football drop kicked
into a pothole bigger than a mini
a five-year-old shouting for mam
a freestyle dog sniffing its way to the cornershop
time could stop
right now
the summer sky could drop
darker than pools of dead blood
under the skin of my knee
in the time it takes to count
to one, two -

I\'m travelling back
for a flicker of a moment:
standing at the top of a termite tower
dragons on the horizon
you
me
balancing
and breathing in
filling our chests with bright slices of storm