It Was Here or My Hard Drive

I stand in a crowd, Close my eyes and I'm alone. In the silence, wild and telling, The November sun warms my left side.

For a moment, I am the leaves Falling from grace, I am The sea trawled by netting, I float through the shimmering schools.

A crane whirs in the distance, Still building the future. Propellers stir the sky, Remembering the mistake.

i don’t want that now don’t ask for or deserve it i’m going to learn

Mornings Open New Days After You, Try Unstitching Every Sunset’s Dig At Youth. Weeks, Evenings, Days; Never Enough So Days Are Years. Trapped Harbouring Unreal Reminiscences, Seeking Defence At Yesterdays, Finally Realising I Didn’t Adapt Yet. 

Why don’t we just go and live beautifully? In the woods, or in a bed, Or in an hour to spare in the duty free, Or the fear of the day we are dead.

Why not? Why won’t we live? Why ride the nine a.m. all the way to five For five Mondays for things that only give One Friday night and two Saturdays to feel alive?

I’d rather a life of Sundays, Pancakes for breakfast and a piano for TV, A dream lost in a shaken sigh and a ‘One day.’ Why is it so difficult to make things easy?

Heroes tear down around us, The gaps once held by the shreds of their glory Enclose us under bars of silence.

My echo will betray me, Ringing of futility as it wobbles like birdsong, Instantly typical. 

To be an Englishman in France is to be a dog in the desert; A house-cat in an Alpine valley, a pitchfork in a haystack, An alien among natives; natives who speak in sounds which hold No meaning, that may as well not be there:

I am not there, I am not present. I laugh when others do To avoid detection, but I am adrift amongst peaks and smiles that I must casually float by, and I am not ashamed. I am learning to let go. I am learning to be alone. 

To be an Englishman in France is to be a cloud among mountains, Whose roots plunge ravine-deep and emerge along paths that I tread. Nevertheless, I know my moments when I see them,  And use them only as I know how to. 

Je pense donc je suis: non! Je croix que je suis - il n’y a pas ‘donc’! Je ne sais pas, je sais rien! 

To be an Englishman in France is to submerge in ambience, Diluted by company, the more the merrier.  I sink as others talk, otherwise I intrude upon what is not mine, What can be mine no longer, what I must let go of. 

To be an Englishman in France is to be at the end of the road,  At the end of the world; my toes pushing rocks down, Down into the hollow pit of future, Clattering the sides as they fall. 

To be an Englishman in France is to have, to have loved and to have let go.