Sprint

 

     My legs are tired,

They cannot bare the weight of iron in the sky –

And I,

Couldn’t, wouldn’t,-

     Shouldn’t have had to have lived this way!

 

     Searching every crevice,

The intrusive beam made blindness

Seem welcoming,

For we needed sleep,

But the whir and the fumes -

(and screams);

     Set insomnia the home

We never had,

     And we’re walking like

Zombies within an inner city

Apocalypse of hard language,

Harder drugs,

     Harder still the children

Of the convict fields.

 

     Time yet,

Gave no warning of impending change,

     And,

You can take the boy out of the city,

But can the city let go the casualty,

Can it really allow freedoms

To sit within affected minds??

 

     (I made my bid,

And dashed as fast I could

To where the woods still flower,

And the wild still frolic all seasons of the year).

 

Now;

     There is a different kind of green

Upon this escape,

A different people who instil

A sense of life to be lived,

A people who do not have

To yield a crop to find

Some sanity and happiness

Within carnage of concrete and fists,

     And I’m saddened to admit it,

But being here,

I am feeling for each and every

Walking death – the city protracts

Upon its many youngest folk,

     And as hard as you can rub,

Maybe the grime from pollutants

Can never leave the face of the scarred.

 

     Forty – seven years on lockdown -

One way or another, and it’s scary because,

My children have the chance that was

Never there for me,

     And like a survivor,

I am riddled with guilt for my place

In the country,

     A country that has always been

Behind closed doors of concealment

To the streetwise populous of lost childhoods.

 

     Can you,

Can you tell me,

Can you tell me that the city will let go?

     Can I now roam the hills of

Ingleborough and let the wind of change

Fill the void within my heart?

     Or,

As my tears part my stale

Congested thinking of imprisonment;

Is it only – to confirm a future

Of incarceration for my soul?

 

     I fear -

My luck could be in,

But only,

     If the city can get out,

Can leave me alone to heal

The madness of half a century

Of gutter, spit and dog shit streets,

Where people, map only

The debris of fag butts and chewing gum;

And each and every corner,

States horizons made of only

Brick, and the huddle of young folk with no hope!

 

Michael J Waite 2nd January 2015.