Never speaking
With your eyes
You have
A thousand times
Made me
Alert. A longed for
Something
As I enter:
Offering a drink,
As I watch myself
Inspired. It’s said:
You smile, turning
The two-ing and frow-ing –
as the girl on the street
a-winking as I walk all hidden
old friend/reliable/brief
not to the road wise-winking
but the walking away thing.
Smashed right through she did
as I looked at her shoes
to sink-sinking
on the road to friend/friendly
thinking I was the King of Kings
On the occasion of the‘occasional’
Wink or flirt here in good old Chelsea.
Enter via a dark tunnel
the wild furnace
of one on top of another –
in a second each replaces another
by the tumbling down of numbers
in towers,
of electronic thunder
flashing signals
to each ‘another’
as rivals in battle
between
merger and take-over;
storms
high up over London
pitching formulae
into the morning rush hour
and
in
a
trance
bet against themselves
all spontaneous and specialist
buying
while falling
a long way and back again
singing to themselves “amen”
(even amidst the raging storm)
in
the
friction of numbers
every aspect of their life living
looks down on us, we who are muted,
spewed forth from heated tunnel –
each step a march concentrated
and without thinking
in a glass eye of blind tempo,
tools ready, eyes ahead,
weather-beaten,
holding the weight of one ton on our backs
backing ‘Them’.
It is still – a unity unto itself, each day
this air inhaled
Climbing higher still our bodies invigorated by
New longing, assumptions assuming new miracles
To be broken by the start of morning.
Of bells fresh but not calling.
It was a fight nobody could win.
Like all business, it comes down to two men –
testing themselves
(not before the walls but within).
Dealers, brokers – a trust we had in them.
All share the spoils – two wives want dresses.
Finally enters the prize: an ice sculpture of the winner –
"it’s his birthday!"
That marked the spending for personal use,
A fee for banking,
the nod to accounting…..
Sulphur inhaled in every street
while people fall, trying to eat it
Only to be asphyxiated by a ‘night air’.
Others, leave.
Their routine begins and ends at Temple.
Only the lovers stay,
these two men as lovers kiss and share the profits.
Having made their numbers –
the clock strikes twelve to begin again.
We believe in one vision, a holy, most almighty,
maker of money, of all that is selfish and greedy.
We believe in it.
Until every being of this earth shall be helpless to resist.
For it came down for our salvation, by the power of credit
that bankers were blessed and became famous.
For our sake, they prayed and got inside information
and made a profit causing comment.
The regulators crucified them but they rise again in glory
with much more
and this kingdom shall have no end.
We believe in this, the giver of bling
who proceeds from generation to generation.
Money has spoken and we believe in an almighty frenzy
to borrow as much as our neighbour
until the end of the air we breathe –
it is a new form of baptism.
And we look to repay it after we are dead. Amen.