trudging grey streets lines their pale weather faces
cracked plaster walls painting a midsummer chill
with wet woolen coats shrouding sodden-sock paces
they shuffle silent into the drum hall
beneath an old naval clock, stale carpet soaks up moisture
a stillborn rain sluiced from stone-stolen water
leeched clean from their soles but
destined to dry in only drab faded fluff
tick
tock
tick
tock
as dissoluted youth drips into drains, paths and shelters
rain clouds the distant scent of any city greater
beneath air choked, lying crooked, mumbling they go,
their ties crooked, their hair fuzzy but not allowed to show
colour beneath the grey, white, navy and black
and to get no hours back for following the herd,
an untidy necessary part of the timeless insatiable pack
where earning money is the reward of money earned.
Damn that’s good.
Too kind.
But reading back on it now, there are too many words in it. It hurts my brain and my eyes to even look at it.
Poetry should always be simple – less words, more images. It was pure verse to begin with – just a few loose half rhymes and a good but irregular meter, but I just got caught up in an arbitrary rhyme structure.
How bloody human of me to try and impose order onto something that doesn’t want it.
All the same, I found it affecting. And that, surely, must always be a good thing in a pome?
Oh yah, but the skill is in crafting it into something that says a great deal in as few words as possible.
This is why I find it incredible that Dickens wrote poetry.