I’m headed back to Croydon, as it goes.

A train into a train into a train.

On a summer’s night, a traveller

finishes his sentences for once,

says something that’ll please the scholars,

says something that’ll make you clever,

has another coffee, forces down

the double-shots leftover from before.

My knees crackle on the stairway,

pop like gunshots in a Stephen King;

a good one, more like Misery,

less Rose Madder and the one about the phones.

My hand is bleeding for some reason.

They say, when you turn twenty-five,

your cells stop resisting like they used to.

I am decomposing, in a way.

I’m headed back to Croydon, as it goes.

A train into a train into a train.

The industrial communication tower

glimmers like a lifeline in the fog;

across the pond, unwanted souls commune

below the cold fist of the Thames.

Sparks fly underneath us, grinding teeth,

hot metal on metal action.

And the Eastern-European girl,

her blossom lips, woollen scarf,

her 25-year-old outsider’s raincoat,

she shoots me a catlike smile.

Five years ago, I could have loved her.

I think I love her now.

I’m headed back to Croydon, as it goes.

A train into a train into a train.

Mother’s Day, 2020: Dawn of a New Plague.

We wake early in the afternoon,

eat something masquerading as a dinner,

watch Godzilla as the sun descends,

and in the garden, where our old dog roamed,

I hack into the body of her storm-felled tree,

feel it crumble ‘neath my mighty hand.

I am The One, the Croydon Highlander,

whose blade shall cleave the heavens.

I am a good son, doing good son things.

Dead trees die forever. We say goodbye.

On TV, Godzilla’s gone to sleep again,

and someone with a voice like melted shame

is reading off the death toll - end of days.

I’m not worried about her. Really, I’m not.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she outlives me.