Minus Five

 

Find me love in this concrete tomb,
an eternal womb, wet and dark, unyielding.

"This here is my place,
space five-oh-two."

Echoes and light stop at minus one,
but the cold follows me down to minus five.

"Could you spare some change
please?

Change, it's strange
what it might do.

"I've a fiver to my name.
Oh, and tuppence."

Spare me, change me. Life changed
around me.

Car-less emptiness
in the evenings
brings oil stains and quiet.

Electric dawn takes dreams from my head,
leaves damp cardboard instead,
and an empty gnawing for warmth.

A goose feather in my pocket,
a refugee freed from pillows,
from polished luxury seventeen floors up.

Lost religion stays lost on minus five,
where heaven is above, but where hell
lacks fire and light, so bones chill and set.

The fastest way here is the whiskey express,
when inner flames burn brighter
than heated warnings.

I have nothing to confess.
"Spare me
a coin or two?"

I have nothing to love
on minus five.