I

At the day’s end silent workers travel homeward. 
In the window flashes past wrecked bodies stacked high 
Before a cemetery, fenced back-yards and alley-ways. 
Train wheels screech then clattering fade before I progress 
Dragging feet past consumption on all sides. 
A butchers' bell tinkles and the rainbow plastic at his door clatters 
Before the customer enters next door to match his wine to his meat. 

On the other side of the roundabout an auction house sells items, 
mysteries to outsiders, to those inside. "Any further bids on lot fifteen?" 
The gutters of this universe contain at times treasures for the trained eye 
a sparrow, beside cigarette butts, and litter next to... 
"That isn't the way I heard it happened" 
A passerby relates whilst turning a corner, faceless and relaying others' words. 
A door slams, there is no breeze, I shuffle my feet still homewards. 

Halfway there, solitary and surrounded, my ears encounter 
a school hall filled with the elderly, "Forty nine...Thirty six... 
Forty.... Bingo!" 

My front door strikes me with absence of change 
and a senseless synesthesia; driven just now so long 
to distraction by the urban: mass-produced ceaseless 
inane noise. Here I resist. The stationary is before long 
disturbed only by a post rental-movie static... 
Sitting still while the world still moves 
Avoiding form to no avail. 
"What did she mean by that?" My mind is foggy every 
magazine is well thumbed so I begin to re-revise
memories in endless iterations. 
I take a breath and dive. 

First published in "Potato" 2008.