Ode to Lipstick

Stepping out of Boots with a
rainbow of reds on the back of
my hand. Scarlet swatches,
poppy pantones. Like tiny
cuts, or exquisite scars.

Leaving lip-stains on
napkins and filters,
red traces on glasses
and suddenly, kisses
are visible, their
transience made
more permanent.
Heart shaped smudges
on cheeks like calling
cards, saying, last night,
for a brief moment,
somebody loved me.

If only boys wore it too.
I'd have more than a
memory to remind me of
you.

Gothic and Norman

One towers darkly -
A volcanic shard of
jagged rock,that
looms over magma roofs.
Black spires pierce the
sky, and from her lofty
vantage point, Black
Mary keeps her
vigil.

The other's vast
grey form dominates
kindly, fair and
square, giantesque.
The slow river wraps
round it. Trees grow
up towards it. And after
sleepless nights, the sun
rises up to bless it.

The Man with the High-Vis Jacket

The tube is a cross section of society, specially selected and placed on display on the carpet-print seats. Like a box of biscuits, or crackers for cheese. More Tesco finest than M&S. Whole grain people and Cream Cracker people. Business men, clean and sharp as water biscuits. Some people crumbling. 

Some broken.

Perhaps my digressive, biscuity observations are the fruit of an empty stomach.

The tube is a plastic fish tank, hurtling through dark tunnels, lighting them up with its aquarium light, filled with bewildered, colourful fish, blank eyes perhaps observing, perhaps not.

Mine are. I’m observing a man in a grey suit and odd socks, though not odd enough that he worried about wearing them to work. He’s doing something on his smart phone, caressing the screen carefully, delicately, with a fingertip. Staring at it intensely. As though stroking a very beloved pet mouse.

I’m observing a middle aged woman reading a book I can’t see the title of, wearing nail polish I couldn’t quite describe the colour of. Sewer rat grey? Wouldn’t sell very well. The woman next to her has hair the colour of overripe cherries, but flaming orange roots. Both of which are nice colours, of course. The overall effect, however, was even less pleasing than the sewer-rat-grey nails. Which, on reflection, were actually rather nice. They went well with their owner’s sludge-green trouser-suit.

But what I’m observing most of all is a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. Not because he’s a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. But because he was wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket.

It’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen him, though the first time, I suppose, I can’t have found him all that remarkable. I had assumed that he worked on a construction site, or was some kind of steward somewhere. Some profession that requires its workers to be highly visible, for safety, or to lend them some semblance of authority.

But now, looking at him again, it didn’t quite fit. It looked more like a costume than a uniform, as though he was an actor I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief for, or a spy I was beginning to suspect. He’s sitting opposite me on the tube with a slight smile, eyes glazed over by his glasses. I take a closer look at his jacket. The acerbic, highlighter yellow is a little grubby, the reflective strips ever so slightly frayed. There are no markings or labels to suggest he belongs to any kind of association or enterprise. His shoes are simple, battered, brown leather lace-ups. Not protective or functional. He doesn't work in construction or stewarding or ticketing, as I'd imagined.

No. He must just wear the jacket because he wants to. Because he likes it. Perhaps he discovered that wearing a high-vis jacket would give him some unspoken authority over others, some fluorescent right that no-one else had, a neon permit to go places he shouldn’t. Maybe he wandered into places for free, skipped queues, opened doors with ‘Private’ signs, moved things, stole things, graffiti’d walls and climbed onto rooftops to look down on the city, smiling slightly, eyes glazed over by his glasses.

Or maybe he's a lollipop man.

Home is where the heart is not.

The hardest thing in the world is
A soft, red quilt
that I will never sleep under again.

Pathetic Fallacy

The sky wrung itself.
And the sad rain washed me out
of the city I loved.

Glass Nest

The winding spiral staircase of the black stone cathedral ascends into the dizzying air. Heads spin, legs ache. Hands sweat a layer of cold metallic sweat as they drag up the handrail. Every window (narrow, dusty paned) sets a scene a little higher than the last. The red rooftops diminish. The horizon expands.

Nestled in one such narrow and dusty paned window, a pigeon. Feathers black-grey like volcanic rock, orange-red eye swivelled round to see its beholder. Frozen between the glass and the narrow stone hole that opens onto the sky, like an animal in a zoo, or an artefact in an exhibition. It shifts, nervously, and reveals beneath it a single egg, startling white. Whiteness such that its existence astonishes. Purity borne from drab filth. 

The pigeon's nest is safe from predators, safe from wind and rain. How shocked it must have been, to find its security false. To be regarded by humans, closer than they've ever been, separated only by glass. To have your private bubble of safety and quiet suddenly cross-sectioned, exposed like the film in the back of a camera. 

I felt sorry for my invasion of privacy yet I couldn't help but stare. If I could, I'd come back daily. Watch the egg crack. Watch it feed its pink and bawling fledglings. Watch them grow, sprout feathers, fly away.

We are addicted to the overexposure of others.

Common Garden Tragedy

There once was a snail without a shell. Everyone thought he was a slug. It got rather irritating. He'd say, "I'm NOT a SLUG!" and sometimes slugs in earshot would say, "well, what's wrong with being a slug?" and it would put him in awkward situations. It wasn't that he didn't like slugs, or that he didn't want to be one. It was just that he wasn't one. He was tired of having to explain things. He was tired of people putting him in a sluggy pigeon hole, tired of people questioning, tired of showing bosses medical notes.

So one day he drowned himself in a beer can.

The snails felt guilty and the slugs felt offended.