CONCRETE_OLYMPUS_

the Spanish sun and a perspiring glass the relief of the Friday 5 of a 9-to-5 a warm catching-up cheers  and the loving rebellion of time for another a New Year’s Eve wish pop and powdery earth plastic cup fizz the happy drink and the easy stress easing drink the drink to close Monday the drink after everyone’s last drink  the warm flat can on a hot chocolate day the one or two drinks are okay for driving later drinking to put my kids to bed drinking to clean the house  drunk in a supermarket buying more drink and the company of drink I chose over you all I failed to notice that I wasn’t drinking to or for anything   I couldn’t think of a cheers because the drink meant nothing But yet my day started with a hope it would end with a glass And now I’m queuing in sobriety

Tesla wife still has her own hair -  a mined ring and solar panels -  a £1k kitchen stereo to listen to morning radio -  volume up for the 2000s club hit  She wanted a Range Rover but his company has an EV policy Tesla wife’s day is  working on and working out -  running after youth on a treadmill -  too dull for hobbies she reads magazines for the adverts and novels in which things throb she sees me in her rear view  in a 15 year old Honda -  an imprinted ring finger -  in 8:59 traffic -  and she stamps her pristine sole  onto the accelerator pedal messaging her husband  about a dream in which he’d cheated

we all have to live with the contents of our bins

it’s played out on Instagram selfies of the bows he carved then an old stone church the kind that no one prays in now he posts scripture  nice paintings of saints  oh spelt ‘o’ lots of love for Jesus  I’m happy for him he was unhappily married and he seemed to hate his wife who seemed to hate him too he was a pagan friend to the earth  spiritual but unattached clawing at the divine   he lost friends, a wife and found god not as a substitute for those things I suppose but perhaps in a void of opinion and the comfort of kindness he found a pathway who knows  

a cold English autumn morning says  the  day can be just this  just sitting in morning clothes on unwashed skin bare armed and sockless sitting in the cold and feeling it meet  the body’s warmth the cold mug and the warm coffee leaves yellow  no call to arms like a summer morning  no fear you’re having less fun no ambition more  than another cup

this boarded up tower led to by concrete stairs with discarded black balloons and a dead rat was built by young minds  in old heads see I was born in the future  when the now was space, electricity and lasers it was tomorrow  loading pixel by pixel from a frail cassette see they stopped showing rocket launches when the rockets exploded and cynicism and grit returned when the future became ridiculous and now utopia is caked in dirt, tags, beer dregs and party balloons  see im looking up from a bus stop sat with people who saw this built more than fifty years ago and thirty years since this was nothing else but the other side of opportunity is longing and regret seems we’re not ready for the new that we only know how to respect empire give us cloud cover and we’ll piss, rob and get high and so now the utopians are unapologetically dystopian and leaving for mars

  all I had was a hot shower the luxury of steam clouding the cold damp orange bathroom with a towel waiting for me that never dried down the hall was a bedroom  a garret in a cut up house with a broken window which the cold air poked its fingers through a bed a desk and a chair where I sat with lonely sad pornography and a printed photograph of a love whose visa had expired the hint of a creative career behind me and now more unnecessary education a poorly paid job and a sad mother dropping a sad man back there was no reason to leave the shower the timeless warm comfort the simplicity of soap and skin and a task we can all get right to turn off the tap and watch the steam fall like a needle lifting off a record and returning to crackle to let the cold air back in this is where I was when the text came a two part text that stopped me still it said I was going to be a dad and I knew this wasn’t good enough

wrappers in a landfill  slowly unscrunching chrysalises 80/20 air and plastic chirruping waste in the haze waking up the meadow became a dump the dream was unwrapped and the packet bobs in the toilet bowl

  I’ve not got thinner I can’t use the word thinner anymore I’m just trying harder to wear old clothing but my old duvet lumps still sag under thin skin a determined middle-aged barrel no longer filled with beer but still undeniably youthless love handles  and lust bumpers I’m not fat  but my bones have hand bags filled with nothing but air clumsily taking up cupboard space  with their misshapen slump hold me but don’t grab a hold of me don’t kneed my belly with little fists only look at me front on allow me to try the medium remind me to appreciate this flesh today because it has an agenda of its own