Note, this will be told from a series of character perspectives within the same city, on the same path. Five segments of the one poem. Subtitle is in bold.
A man.
--
Pretty clouds of vivid colour float by
remarkable only for its absence around him;
lights flicker over dusky skin, scrabbling for purchase
but finding no hold as though he was
the too slick surface of a sewer drain.
Thousands of feet storm the pavement
the thundering repetition of beating hearts,
a distant echo; darting slips of Morse-code
twine together in delicate conversation.
Expelled breaths thrum together in a
gentle susurrus that builds and builds
until the pressure fills his head like a bloated
tumour full of noxious gases and he wants
for nothing in life but for the city to
Inhale.
The stink of bourbon and rum sours
on the tongue, whistling through cracked
postern teeth made from crumbling, yellow paint.
Bleary eyes leak of their own accord as the bottle
rolls, clink-clanking merrily down
the path.
Splintering vision returns to the colourful
clouds that whirl and storm by in a rush
of accumulated breath washed down by
the weeping of this discarded shell; which
of these butterflies emerged from his cocoon?
Exhale.
And what so briefly filled him spews out
onto the cold stone; hacking breaths bring
forth chunks of bitter tasting memories. He
wipes them from fat lips rubbery with disuse,
flecked with snow-white curls of dead skin
yet to forget the bloom of health
These clouds continue to haunt his sky,
pregnant with thought and feeling, impressing
upon the skin (from within) lines of poetry
to mark each of them as little more than
poorly constructed sentences burdened
with adverbs and racing to meet the final
full stop.
Of all the writers in the world, why did
he have to be saddled with one haunted
by the sound of children’s laughter?
