Poem 30

I like this poem’s sense of busy brain and busy world – someone unable to sleep for awareness of morning on the other side of the planet …

… Greg O’Brien particularly liked this … which was nice since there was a moment after his first poem was published in The Listener when I felt he’d pretty much nailed everything I was trying to do …

( … bird-bearings is good – and the bells! referencing The Hunchback of Notre Dame … )

Insomnasia

I can't get the billion bicycles of China
out of my head
they're coming at me in the steamy morning traffic
grinning
               & going to work

they come
rolling over the hump of my sleep like a judder bar
bursting through paper screens
puncture kits and rice lunches in saddlebags
elbows to the breeze
grins slashed maniacally beneath industrial-strength glasses
the tides of peace
the sound of good intentions
the morning curved as sensibly as a white mudguard
on a warm wheel

I break into a sweat
the bird-bearings in the dawn's hub
call for oil
I close my eyes

the bells!