THOUGHTS FROM A BICYCLE
The sun sets at nine o’clock
Squeezed between the railings
So tightly it might pop
I set off at four,
Clattering past
sun-stained houses,
sustaining
Terraced attic rooms;
erratic wombs
For doleful adolescents
With melancholy bicycles,
melting in the tarmac.
At five the city blisters,
A town really, with
Salmon cheeks and red-brick sunsets
Dissolving Into your tongue
Like olive brine
Six years later,
I cycle aimlessly
The sun in my face
Too bright to see
Two legs for a compass
Two wheels for my map
The pavements have forgotten me
And I am a stranger.
Seven,
Softly swallow
All those songs
you thought were about love,
That were actually about romance
Between big bleached fringes
And bicycle chains
Ties hanging loose
And afraid of change
The tyres screech at 8:03
The pedals whisper amongst themselves
Petty anecdotes,
sodden memories
About alleys
we used to smoke in
And the parks where we collapsed
And pubs and chip-shop ketchup
and joints before assembly,
Stow-on-the-wold,
cocaine-on-the-weekend.
forgettable, forgetting, forgotten.
At nine With the sun
I am undone like a top button.
My limbs are too long and my wrists poke out
This blazer is too small for me
The threading rips and the badges leap
onto the curb
Where the tarmac swallows me up.