1 New Poem

Cities Can Be Lonely

A kind of bread and water living,
impressions unfaithful in disappeared ink,
takes its cresting toll, wave batters,
not as in Bloomsbury backrooms
of men-of-letters candle burn, but

some imitations we find by chance,
or screening midnight intents.

I don’t want to be your newspaper
lover, some scandal morning press;
we’ve never lightened names enough
for any ways of great confusion.

I don’t want to be some summer’s
sea-breeze, Ascot memory etched
there, defaced by schoolboys’
pocket blade turns.

I want to be,

more than bread,
more than water,
than passing glances,
than swallowed words,
fainting phrasing,

the kind that makes unfinished
spires on Dockland shore less
grey,

that springs old column placards
back in pristine shade:

yours.