I don’t know where these Union Jacks flags came from,
Their interdispersed patriotism
Realpolitik from a bungalow very much mundane.
We’ve exercised our partition
With a pride of divorce
We know who we are
Our diversed society resourcing our identity from selective shunning.
But again soon this pride will fade.
As will the #PostRefRacism
again we will cool complacent.
We’re the Tagine
ignored on the island
of a White Company decked kitchen.
Bought intending on extracting its exotic essence,
left out as decoration,
to exude vibrant metropolitan inclusion.
I prop today’s Evening Standard behind the priority seat’s folding desk.
en-route to sleep alongside my love.
The paper naturally dog-eared from today’s avid reading.
I’ve positioned it so that yesterday’s mini genocide can draw another pair of hands to take on its tear saturated text.
Bhs black trousers, polkadot blouse, with her hair… frisson.
I catch my new travelling companion’s eyes scanning the papers bold typeface.
I think she’s re-read today’s title, she leant over
nearly embracing the nape of the next row.
She reclines.
Her bag’s yawning mouth hung politely upon her knees,
a book lifted from her bag;
5lbs in 5 days.
*****
Evening Standard – An English newspaper often handed out for free on public transport.
Life’s fleeting dramas,
between the weekends first petite verre and it’s last exhausted exhale.
Perched upon each moment,
I lament the slow passing
of the day’s million stories, I sit
appreciating it’s finite beauty;
neglecting word, metaphor and so too their immortality.
I step across this morning’s Shirley playing field,
curving a festooned spider’s snare.
I sigh, treading through a snails bedroom.
But it’s 7:05 en route to being late to work;
A solo crow flows through, under a half cast sky,
the Eastern fog to the Western blue.
We were perched on the walls lip, down stream from the hipsters smoking working-class DIY cigarettes,
sipping prosecco.
The Regent’s Canal reflecting the last light of the day.
“This reminds me of the Congo, ” Wilfried starts.
“But I used to see dead bodies there”.
Not the unattainable picture of perfection
unavailable to those but printed in glossed fiction.
You’ve a face of diamonds and petals,
but a soul more disarming.
A bloomed rose of the ashen earth,
perfect in your humble honesty.
I like to dress in black,
Hood up, listening to Chopin.
Walking through the Overground carriage,
watching myself cease to exist
As people cut eyes
And the possibility of a simple perfunctory grin.
J.C. FitzDerick 