Engines of Our Spaceship

I watch from under The shade of the fly-over. The ring road squeezes the city Into prolapse. The sky closes for business And the clouds fold over, Like a restless sleeper's duvet. A sun-flare splits the grey fade Of the post-rush hour queue. I don’t think that the commuters Can see the heard approaching. A hot breeze whispers Through skeletal trees. I can see the horses racing Up the dual carriageway. The Ikea sign is melting, and Flaming hooves are pounding Over the blackened bones Of roadkill and exhaust pipes. The harras rages Through the heat haze shimmer. Their manes are ablaze. With unstable diamond eyes And the stars in their teeth, They unleash Beautiful incineration On to the idle traffic. Flashes of orange and red caress Idle wing mirrors. I see the fire-heard Race through the barrier and Leap across the fly-over. Mirrored windows kiss The glare of a new Temporary sun. There will

I take a late-night walk through the park, where Trees are hanging in a frail parliament. They lean in for a late-night session Their photocopied leaves are trembling At the thought of autumn alopecia. I try to imagine the speed of tree-thoughts. How long do they take to penetrate? And are they articulated only By green or gradients of red and brown? I can’t tell, in the amnesia of moonlight. A shopping bag is snagged by brittle hands And held up, beseechingly to the stars That glaze the hardened September sky.

‘Can we pretend we’re in Blake’s Seven again?’ I ask Mark. We are wasting another afternoon, sitting in the spare bedroom of Uncle Billy’s house. The sun is beaming in through the net curtains, warm on our arms. Tiny specks of dust float lazily in the air. There’s a funny smell in the room. Mark says it’s from the mothballs in the wardrobe. They smell bad.   We are surrounded by flowery wallpaper, yellow and pink. A cartoon jungle.   A large double bed lies opposite the windows. We’ve been using the grey, itchy blanket as a battleground for our space games. I peep out through the net curtains and see the kids playing football in the street. They are screaming and laughing. They call us the Britser Boys. They laugh at the way we talk, but they let us play with them anyway. We are on holiday. The street isn’t too different to our own in Birmingham, expect they have little parks everywhere here in Dublin, with big statues of ‘Our Lady’ in them. And sometimes you see lines of cow

Let’s go Saturday shopping on the high  street, where the army of mobility  scooters roll over empty packets of  insulin, as easy jets leave viper trails in the snakeskin clouded horizon. We’re caught up in the supermarket sweep of dwindling shelves, as we help ourselves to what we need. The headlines scream ‘leave means leave,’  as we struggle and heave multi-packs of  toilet rolls into groaning trolleys. Our  stock-pile smiles are straining at the leash,  because we know, it’s a closing-down sale. The butcher is busy hacking away  at chlorinated chicken breasts. Beware. He’s a Leaver with a meat cleaver. He’s  got something to say. A thought of the day  he read in the Daily Mail.  He's hiding  the best cuts for the sweet-shop lady, who  bit all the heads off the jelly babies. She's pushing ahead of the queue for the  bread. She knows, it's a closing-down sale. 'Rule Britannia' plays over the tannoy  as trolleys