Passing Glances
If eyes are magnets,
We all share a pole,
When pupils meet
With a stranger’s soul –
On a train, in a crowd,
As we sweep and dart,
The moment so quickly
Pings apart.
Our eyes downcast,
And slowly glaze –
We’d sooner avert
Than share a gaze.
We censure our stares,
And apologies,
If our lonely vision
Should meet your eyes.
Nonsense Avenue
Why can’t our road names
Be honest and neat,
As regular codenames
To Gardens and Street ?
A road name is two-fold,
That ought to be checked
To see me and you told
Just what to expect-
A Lane should be narrow,
A Way should be broad.
Alas, this clear arrow
Is often ignored –
Our naming mis-uses
And gives itself airs,
With Prospects and Muses
And circular Squares.
Flying Mice
The city is full of urban sparrows,
A hundred to each tree –
Flocking under the tourists’ feet
And dicing cars along the street.
They steal the food from off the barrows,
And ride the trams for free,
Nesting anywhere they can grab
In any old wall or concrete slab.
Finding their hedgerows far too narrow,
They seek opportunity –
When it’s just too dry for rainy pigeons,
Up-pop sparrows with ambitions.
Urban Pilgrims
“Nobody owns a pet in Istanbul, they just befriend the local strays.”
– The Local Planet Guide
The dogs are stays and tramps and ferals,
Picking scraps, surviving perils,
Living in gaps on tufts of ground –
Though the locals seem to like them hanging round.
But who knows what diseases lurk,
And how much needed council work
To catch and spay and then release ?
Is that why vagrant number still increase ?
They may look cute in tourist spots,
But less so in the poorer lots –
Traffic-tangling, always breeding –
Some look starved, but overall succeeding.
We wonder where the pups are hidden,
As they lounge around, unbidden.
Have they fleas ? We’d best not breach –
So stroking-wise, they’re just out of our reach.
And now official policy
Has moved to stop them roaming free,
To round them up and put them down
To kick the mange and rabies out of town.
But then there are the feral cats
About the mosques and laundromats –
They’re just as cute and just as cherished,
But they’re far less likely to be perished.
They too are mating uncontrolled,
But always act as good as gold
Just lazing round the grand bazaars,
Despite their secret ticks and worms and scars.
Basilica Cistern
The columns are far too carved
To just be buried neck-deep in water –
They have to have been acquired from older stock,
Reused to order.
What once held temple pediments,
Perched on Corinthian tops,
Are now a vaulted forest
Lurking underneath the shops.
There swim some carps between the bases
Of this Roman reef,
That graze the algae off the wishful coins
That glint beneath,
While downside-up Medusas watch
The tourist lines go by –
They’ll still be here a thousand years from now,
Through wet and dry.
The Magnolia Jungle
Indoor cats grow fat
About the flat,
From all their lack of pace –
They spend all morning sat
Upon the mat,
Just cleaning fur and face.
Then mooch-in for a chat,
Or stroke and pat,
As though they own the place –
And sleep upon a hat,
Or idly bat
The drapes with easy grace,
They’ve got it far too soft and easy,
Never getting cold or sneezy,
Staring out the windows, queasy,
At the thought of empty space.
Hiding from the wet and breezy,
Doing as they damn well pleasy
Till they’re corpulent and wheezy,
Hiding in their cushy base.
Indoor cats grow fat,
Without a rat,
To give them cause to chase –
But they don’t care for that,
They run this flat –
Or prowl, in any case…
Soffits versus Crockets
A war was waged in brick and lime,
Throughout Victorian abodes –
A battle fought in seminars
Of finials and glazing-bars.
It seemed so vital at the time –
For who defined the building codes
Controlled the future, wrote the book,
On how our homes and cities look.
The round opposed the pointed arch,
The column pushed against the pier,
As Classical and Gothic taste
Were drafted, pressed, and laid to waste.
With footslog critics on the march
To make their case and boo or cheer –
With so much breath and ink well-spent,
As up and up the buildings went.
But in the end, the Romans won –
The Gothic stalled, and fell from grace
Despite its use in school and hall,
It still felt churchy, overall.
Beneath Edwardians, its run
Was looking tired and losing pace –
Which was a shame, because its fuss
Was far more fun than serious.
As the following century
Dragged on, it ditched the Grecian-born –
As Classical found it was too
Of little use for shiny-new.
So buildings lost all sensory adornments,
All their locks were shorn –
And so the Battle of the Styles
Saw losses shared across the aisles.
Shires Old & New
English counties show a frozen glimpse
Of population,
Of where we lived, a long time since,
At the dawn of our English nation.
Cathedrals too, and the larger abbeys,
Hint at a bustling past –
Wells and Ripon weren’t so drab,
But boom-times couldn’t last.
Huntingdon, you once were free,
With Somerton and Appleby –
But people change, and trade moves on,
To Milton Keynes or Basildon.
Political constituencies
Can’t stand still too long,
Without some boarder-fluencies
To keep their numbers strong.
Postcode districts are a modern score
To count the blur –
If they survive a thousand more,
They’ll show where once we were.
Stevenage, you’re earned your key,
With Swindon and Southend-on-Sea.
But people change, and drift away
To who-knows-where and come-what-may.
Dedication to her Art
She is a Goth in black and pale,
In a daily cosplay, a loudmouth mime –
I muse if the process ever gets stale ?
But she’s on the dole, so I guess she has time.
On the days when I see her looking very boring
Is a day when I think she prob’ly has an interview –
But otherwise, I see her chequered like the flooring,
Posing for commuters as we hurry on through.
In time, I guess, she’ll simply grow out of it,
And land that job where she has to behave,
And sign-up for tennis, as if she never doubted it,
And marry into motherhood, and paint the architrave.
Until, one day, an unexpected photograph,
An over-awed grandchild, and it all comes back –
With a flicker of pride and an unassuming laugh,
And a tale of the daily pale and black.
Am I projecting ? I think I’m projecting.
But every day, as her statement goes by,
I find myself once more reflecting
On how she’s the only one round here to even try.
Yet surely the Goths are braver when in company,
As freaks together, a performance shared ?
But her mates just slouch in their t-shirts, grumpily –
And I am no different, I never would have dared…!
Garden Overspills
Low branches over pavements,
Should I bob or step out in the road ?
Who leaves wych-elms any which-how,
Never pruned, and deeply downward-bowed ?
Though less likely misbehaving,
More likely negligence at fault.
I ought to hack them off right now,
But more than like I get done for assault.
Double-deckers punch right through,
But my head has to duck beneath each stalk.
It’s worse when it’s been raining,
And I get a hairwash thrown into my walk.
But appletrees, and conkers too,
Are lack-of-headroom serial abusers –
Lurking, swelling, for each braining –
As the Autumn comes, so come the bruises.
Rhyming Couplets 