Choice

The ambulance wails

In the distance 

Across a damp drizzle

These dreams

Aren’t always clear

I like to think

I’m always changing

But everything stays the same

In these washed up hours

And shipwrecked hopes

You see it in faces on the street

On the train

Hiding from the deep

In the shallow wastelands of modern life

Well go on then

Let’s crack on

The show goes on 

And all that

But

I’m tired

I’m lost

I’m out of touch

I’m a little too in love

With suffering

And deadbeat reflection

Another day awaits

Big city boy

Stuck in moving crowds

Where I’ve never belonged

But I keep finding myself in bigger ones

The urban sprawl

A necessity of modern life and modern civilisation

Hive mind ant life

Sweaty in stations even as the seasons change

I could be growing tomatoes now

Or chopping fish in the back of some seaside village restaurant

Or opening up my bar at 3pm 

Taking chairs off tables

Small talk with waiters

But I sit in trains and make up ideas

As the horizon glows

As I mind the gap

The bench

 Some afternoons after work I’d walk

down to the promenade walkway

and walk 2 miles up the shore and back again

Strangely I preferred the windy afternoons

they somehow blew the monotony of the working day away

and made me feel alive again

There was an old man who always sat on the same bench

as I walked past

Some days I’d catch him getting there

some days I’d catch him leaving

Most times I’d just see him sitting there

on his own

looking out over the sea

I felt I knew what he was thinking

Sometimes he’d be staring down

at his old wrinkled hands or looking at passers by

A few times I saw him petting dogs smiling

so I knew he was kind type

I liked him for that

And then one day he wasn’t there

Ever again

As I walked back to my apartment

a couple of blocks back

I would sometimes think

We’re all just alone

sitting on a bench

waiting to disappear

Growing tomatoes

Stuck in this corporate world

The longer I’m in it the more I want to leave it

And the more it becomes . . . impossible to

Gazing out the window on a listless Friday

The alien-like voices on conference calls drift

Through cold glass windows and they drone

And drone and drone

Like machines that have been left on

And my thoughts wander again

To that small town in my mind

Small house in a small town

Waking to the sound of a rooster

Watching the sun go down on my veranda each day

With white wine or maybe a whiskey if I’m in the mood

Spending days the way I please

Answering no one

Questioning nothing

Growing my own tomatoes

The modern world just a highway in the distance

The sound reminding you that it’s there, if you need it

But only if you need it

Only if you need it

Some daydreams keep you sane