Mostly feeling pity.
But sometimes fury
in the press of the crowd,
I scan it for an eye
to talk to, not aloud
but stealthily, quickly,
as one shade
might sign to another
in the queue for Avernus.
Here, we agree,
is where the incurious
or damned unlucky
live on in body
when the spirit dies.
On such a train,
in some murky
siding of a poet's brain,
Limbo was devised
where is no agony and no
joy either,
just fleshy emptiness
sweating out the space between
weary I-am-ness
and the unloved pack.
As face retreats from face
to coverts of soft porn,
football, lust in paperback,
the old, waste, token city,
(church and castle)
vanishes along the line,
resurrecting in a chain of
rainbows - steel-riven
ribcage for the breathing Tyne.
Put down your book.
Lift up your eyes.
The river's awake and at work
in its vault of bridges.
Electric confetti,
riding the tune of its pulse,
play on the water -
scraps and shapes of light
like beaten copper,
celebrating our immense
human smallness
with a carnival.
"Don't rot inside your body,
build your soul."
That old Tyne theme song.
We rattle over the rail bridge,
beating along,
dum diddy, dum diddy...
There are too many of us.
Still, some undeniable voltage
wants to connect us.