Identity Parade

Street by street, the city’s shivered breath whispers
of blood-letting.

Traffic’s bloodstream,
in a rip-tide over the cobbles,
beaches a mirage of torn-up souls,
scooped and fleshless against windowless stone,
faces slick with memory and rain,
the history of tears and sweat like rivers on the skin,
with the gooseflesh of temptation, or walked-on graves.

Headlights rake the back alleys.

Do not ask…

…do not ask who she and he,

who the elusive others are
who broach night’s expectation that anyone

could be the same, and still be different,

undefined and opposite in themselves…

…do not ask whose hand brushes worry, like a fallen curl,
from the forehead.

We, who are identified, not by parade or photo-fit,
as wanted men, wanted women, persons of interest,
the inexplicable persons of our volition.

Cold seeps into the soul like smog; light is artificial,
and the streets are a pavement of lies;

nothing here for the heart as it fails, as it skips a beat,
nothing, except touch, nothing, to be seen.

The late hour’s underbelly rolls us up,
leaves our bodies to the sorrowful morning;
darkness having bled them out for a semblance of pleasure
or the seeking, not of it, but the name of it, on the lips,
or for sight of it glimpsed left-handed in the mirror of a window.

The answers broadcast among the town-lit stars fly away,
dying fire, debris in the dark, debris still in the light of morning.

Passion gives way, regret snags the throat,
uncertainty comes again, like sobbing speech,
all our lost emotions are set free by accident
and still we fight the eyeless devils who shame us,
who other and divide us.

But you and I must go again to plumb the depths of evening,
go gentle but afraid into the rained-on vennels, searching,
night after night, asking the crowds to bring us home.

© BH, 2021

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Outsiders, again. The vexed question of identities dogged the lockdown years - as it dogged the preceding few. Through all the argument and diatribe, I was conscious that, despite the generalities, the particular misfortunes, abuses and othering are as hard to bear as ever,

I thought of so many who walk this world and ached with need and fear, hope and horror. It is, I thought, one of the burdens of the age. So many voices speaking up or out, so many pouring vitriol on behalf of others who as still just an idea in the main. Not one of us is normal, We are all looking for safe harbour. Day by day we go into the world and leave behind what little we have found.