A gallery of strangers

A gallery of strangers

Wrapped in sportswear

Tubed in unctions

Emobroacted muscles

Encased in exercise bands

Watches with lifelines

Recording progress

Marking time

Making a judgement

On the progress of civilisation

The sweat of ageing bodies

The slip and slide of tired flesh

Hormonally charged.

Unbound thoughts

Wander freely

Crashing from one thing to another

With the intensity of blowflies

Beating themselves to death

In a tin can

Hot rats fighting over

Yesterday’s excess.

Brain cavities

Need their own degree

Of exorcism

Battered by music

Eroded by degree

Twenty-first century

Romantics

Dreaming of lost things

Yesterday’s follies

Broken promises

Lies of atonement.

The sea rolls in and out

In endless communion

With the sandbanks

Every caress a whisper

The wind blows

Hot and cold

There is rage in the air

Better to walk it out

Than walk it in

Secrets are only as good

As the company they keep.

Eyes follow briefly

Before falling away

Nobody holds a gaze

For too long

There is solitude here

Among the moving

Keeping pace with sunrise

The passage of time

And the movement of clocks.