Lodestone

Quixotic polestar

Far out on the shimmering horizon - yellow white rim

At once my icon and my guide


When I orientate myself to you

The jumble clutter details of my everyman life

Crash like burnout cars


And I am left alone on the parameter of your awe

High and wide

Skirting the sunny side


Dumbstruck

And counting my lucky stars!

You're All Staring at Screens!

A man from 1980 takes a stroll across 2012

Notice how dawn doesn’t rise with daylight ?

Process what you see and ask “Why?”

Try and start a chant on the football terraces

Think about the colour of sky


Pull yourself away from your phones and tablets

Turn from your massive TV

I’m throwing dollar bills on a tramful of commuters

Nobody’s looking at me!


Consider how night rain feels much wetter

When it shows up in the brake-light beams

I’m in awe

All wowed and humbled

You’re all staring at screens


Keep your head down

Don't talk to your neighbors

City life has gotten real mean

You’re techno-fodder in little mini-me tribes

Shades of regression to the mean


What the hell happened to please and thank you ?

Why y’all chatting to yourselves ?

Nothing makes sense

From the nose-tail traffic

To the titles on your magazine shelves


I live mine from the minute I wake up

You need sleep to get dreams

I’m looking out at the world in wonder

You’re all staring at screens!

The Emergence Of Dusk

Summer sewn browns and a slither of canal light

Paint a new colour of quays

Crude arboreta fresh from a lost fight

Swaying in the chattering breeze

In-for-the-night cars lined up all particular

Freezing in the Arctic north

A lonely flock of residents huddled in a dalliance

Arcing down a silhouette wharf


Flooded in a swathe of moon-dust silver

Studded on an indigo sky

Patched and checkered in a quiver of jet-trails

Winter weather systems pass by

Balconies flutter like a million sundays

Echoing a summer long-passed

Neon strips bounce along a circus of media

Making all the ripples pool fast

Steal-away lovers in a whisper-sweet paradise

Longing to be frozen in time

Eights on the water pulling in harmony

Rowing to the far shoreline

Sun-shapes flicker like the slow-dying ditties

Of a blues-funk accordion busk

A melody of houselights tripping off the promenade

Beckons the emergence of dusk