ONE FORTY 87



In a wild breeze
An old man was sweeping
A courtyard clear of leaves
The wind blew them around him again
Some Zen at work there
Fifteen minutes earlier, my hair had been tied back
With usual morning impatience
And in jungle camouflage trousers
I had walked down Marsh Lane, waited and alighted

I count the stops with eyes shut
Knowing what will be outside
All sickeningly familiar
Dozens of stressed grey faces
Various seasons in their journey

In winter on frosted windows
Branches sharp with gilded ice, throw shilouettes
We are speeding downhill
I sit forward to avoid the smoke
(Gave up recently, but lack the will for long)

Feel a shift in myself to affirm the norm
On a 140 bus - a sudden understanding
How most people are not given the time
To care about more
Than what they need to survive with

I am safe in a part time job
It pleases everyone all ‘round
I have time for money and time to think
More answers to be learned on a 186 this afternoon
But now the lights are all against us
We pick up more grey strangers
And do not move fast enough now

I am twenty -one years old
And I hate being late.



/// Thanks to an old schoolfriend, known since I was four, I appeared in a role in
The Task Force, mid 87, which later mutated into ‘ Employment Training’.
After six months, I applied for the post of Chargehand and was surprised how easy
it was to take ‘command’. I went full time, taking a gang of varied psychopaths and
alcoholics to pensioner’s overgrown gardens. We turned them from Vietnam into the Somme.
For the most part I had a great time, every day different, outdoor work, human stories.
Some days would see me weeping over the life styles and frailness of the elderly or those with
terminal illnesses. Almost no one would be there to help them, including neighbours or relatives,
it seemed we were their only social services. I loved my team too, the last mad soldiers in the
battlezone. The Thatcher government ran out of money just before Christmas 89 and three months
before Mum and I moved house - my first redundancy, without pay. Having a steady and
responsible job made me suddenly older and shout at schoolchildren who blocked my way up bus
stairs. In the evening I would become a teenager again, but I knew time was running out.///