Hey Tico - I know you are a 'prose person' and this thing i've been writing is totally rhyme (i know, I'm a low life but - check it out) I haven't wanted to write anything serious for a while - and you never know, i may fully convert you at last!
and thanks
hope you like it
Breathe
*********************
It was a Friday.
I took the footpath alongside the railway, at the back of Fenwick St - a row of dirty terraced houses; black and scarred. Looking down into brick-walled yards, where little kids played, shouting under washing hung to dry, below a pale blue sky.
Night was still hours away.
A cat sat on a shed roof watching me. Swinging its grey head slowly from left to right as I went by.
We looked each other in the eye.
"Peter! Ge' in 'ere f'ya tea, nah, " a voice screeched.
A door slammed. The cat turned and ran, leaping down onto grass with a thump. One back leg a stump.
Two girls were walking towards me up the path.
One pushed a pram and she leaned in and laughed, saying something to her baby.
I dunno why, but it fazed me.
I knew I'd seen her before, somewhere in school. She was skinny and tall, with peace signs all over her jacket.
A loony fanatic. (At least, that's what I'd been told, by the mould).
They saw me coming and started nudging one another.
I knew the smaller girl
(Well, at least I knew her brother).
Still, my face was burned by their black ringed eyes and I pretended to see something, somewhere, high up in the sky.
"Alec, ain't it?" The smaller girl asked, as I tried to slip by them, on the edge of the path. She had a Guns N' Roses badge pinned to her lapel.
(I thought Guns N' Roses were a bunch of girls).
"Yeah, I know your brother, Tad," I said.
(And didn't add, last time I'd seen him, he'd been pissed off his head).
Instead, I looked down at the baby, lying asleep on it's back.
Its skin was almost black.
"Whoa," I heard myself say.
The tall girl glanced at me and I felt ashamed as she nudged the pram into action, driven by my dumb reaction.
"Sorry." I barely said, to the back of her head.
As they continued on I heard the small one claim,
"F-cking blokes, they're all the same."
For a moment I stood there, watching them go.
Tad's sister looked back once, but her tall friend didn't slow.
So I turned and tried to forget her, but I knew how much I had hurt her. I'd seen it right there in her eyes.
A look of sad surprise.
"****." I told the sky.
Then a car backfired in Fenwick street. A boy on a swing showed me the souls of his feet.
As he swung the other way, he was smiling through the air. He waved to me once, as I drew near.
Both chains wobbled to the left.
I held my breath. But he was alright. He jumped from the swing and ran out of sight.
The dog at number 14, hit the garden gate as I was passing and I winced at its barking.
"F-ck you." I said, as I drew level, refusing to look at the snarling muzzle, as it snapped at me through a hole in the trellis, which someone had put up to discourage any leaping of the wall.
The mutt was fairly small, but wild-eyed and insane, with a locked-on brain.
Further along, the path was littered with all manner of ****. Like someone had emptied their dustbin out on it. Then kicked it around a bit.
I spotted a fag packet and trod on it.
I kicked a beer can and it bounced sharply away, into some bushes, where no doubt it would remain, rusting away, like an old man over the years, who has drunk too many beers.
My watch said 5 : 23 - and I could feel time rushing, coming up behind me - about to arrive, like a sudden surprise.
When I heard the train I turned to walk backwards and stuck out my thumb.
It was an old train pulling out of London, on a tired track.
The driver got a look at me and waved back as he whipped by, chased by the carriages and briefly seen faces, smudged behind glass and then gone.
The hot smell of diesel rolled over me as I turned and continued on. Watching the train out of sight.
I was waiting for night.
) 
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