Harbor front

The water pulses; endless waves endlessly failing;
Heartless gestures.

Far out over the bay the king-hell bridge lies sandwiched between two seas;
Water below and smog above.
It crawls with white trucks;
Like maggots on a twig.

On opposing shore, buildings rise from the tree layer which masks the concrete jungle beyond.

Steel plant smoke stacks rise from great brown piles of brownness.
They are cold and empty now
Because a dose of reality labelled pour ekonomy
Is spoiling all our golden dreams.

It’s almost spring and a dozen rusty leaves rattle in the wind,
Death-grip on the barren tree still holding.

Thrum of bicycle chains come now and then and go.
A pair of roller blades zooms and whirs
Like a fighter space jet.

Gulls shriek as if being cooked alive;
Remind of the strangled coughing spasms upstairs
Keeping me awake last night;
Leaving me sleepy.

Sudden cool wind on my nape jars me awake.
Strong breeze turns the page; I grasp it tight
So it turns the other page.
The wind does not want this poem written.

Red-leafed flag flaps and claps.

Man in lycra addresses his beeping apparatus;
Drinks water from a flask made of some material
beginning with the prefix poly;
Reminds me I could go for a cracker.

Teenage girls are making a list of everyone they know who are pregnant.

A man objects to my putting the guitar away;
Wants to hear some bluegrass.
I doubt my songs would qualify.

Pointy sailboat finally slides by
Like a needle marking tree trunk graduations.
Fifty white birds meet it head on;
Skimming the steel blue surface
In rock-steady formation.

Man and boy in matching caps arrive with rods and reels.
Junior is neither petulant or sluggish but eager to cast.
They seem fond of their circumstance
And one another.

Only straight above does the sky appear that most striking of blues;
Mankind’s favourite colour.
The shield between we and an eternal endless wasteland of hydrogen and radiation
Dotted with improbable oases which I will never see
Because the most worthwhile thing in the cosmos is we,
And we are not meant to last
And we seem not to know that we are
Or that we aren’t.