From: "Journeys on the Underground and Beyond, II"
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journeys-Underground-Beyond-Bilingual-English-Portuguese/dp/1517343496/)
October
October leaves swarm the City
Like a plague of locusts
The autumn air fills
Even dusty attics
Silence descends down elevator shafts
The Thames shudders
In the brisk morning fog
The barren leaves
Infest the eyes of disinclined pedestrians
High-heeled women walk awkwardly
Grey takes over sky and earth
Grim school yards
Lack maddening crowds running up and down
Sleepiness has crept in
Even the flattened out trains, run along their tracks
Like austere penances
Days gone short as in Kotka
Suffering an angst on their chest
Digital placards resemble
Wilted cypress trees
The voices of the city retreat
By several decibels
Almost like whispers, civilised
The inhabitants are nearly reverent
Like hesitant parishioners at the church gate
They leave their airs and graces, self-obsessions
Verging on pious
As if the narrow streets
Crowned with sky scrappers
Made them feel intimidated, small
The buildings are afflicted with arthritis
Dull façades, gloomy
Hovels once exuberant
The air is heavy, pregnant with dew
Dingy outfits clash with neon lights
The cold wind wets the eye sockets, flushes the faces
All the grandeur of human creations and ingenuity
Shakes and bends, humiliated
Filth undresses, shameless
Slapping the city right in the face
October desecration
Scandalous rape of this so middle-class city
Oh even the lamp posts twitch
Embarrassed by their dejected lights
Shadows diffused, distorted
Over the pavement
Covered in leaves and cans rolling, pointless
Only the splendour of coated glass structures
Ergonomic shapes
Defy spectacular, even the dense clouds
Those are simply brazen, expansive and ruthless
They have a virile pomposity
A tying impertinence
Suggesting prepotent orgasms
Oh brutal October
Imposing inapposite twilights
Plastic bags spin, hideously out of place
Like tumbleweed on a theatre stage.
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