High Street Blues

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My closed-circuit eyes focus on the line
Of butterscotch clouds, melting in plum skies.
In this new dawn, ginger tom stretches, yawns.
Indifferent to raspberry school-run horns. 

Treacle traffic blocks my arterial streets.
Slap of church-bell heart attack thunders
Through the pale snooze of the cemetery.
A soundtrack to my Monday high-street blues. 

Soft-focus on doorway shadows. Cardboard
Bed is shed in a methylated shrug.
Alcoholic Scorpio, water sign.
Sorrows drowned in a foam of Special Brew. 

Quick cut to convoy of caffeinated
Parents, herding squabbling sisters and
Brothers through academy doors. Floors
Confected with litter and unicorn glitter. 

Lens-flare flash on a green baby-buggy.
Pushed neatly, discreetly crossing the road.
Narrowly missing the crates of fruit and
Vegetables. Chased by coarse market curses. 

Flash cut to wild-haired earth mother, reeking
Of essential oils. With a wide-eyed child
In hand. Running from a Co-op spillage.
Calamity Jane denies any damage. 

Lavender dusk falls. I wear my shroud of
Sodium. My myopic yellow lights
Flicker and strobe in the wake of rush hour.
Chip-shop breeze in greasy hair of tired trees. 

Late-night edit of leopard skins and white
Shirts, who colonise safe spaces in a
Conga-line stagger. Not like Jagger. A
Smithereen carpet for Uber hangovers. 

Post-club fade on brazen foxes, frozen
Under broken swings. Howling lullabies.
Savouring scraps blown in ghost-town whispers
Of my decline. Camera now off-line.

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