Behind The Yellow Line

(I think I'm right in saying this was one of the few poems I wrote whilst I was gallivanting around Australia. At this point the creative juices really weren't flowing very well, and there was nobody about who was willing to give me the necessary kick up the backside.  

I ended up reading this a couple of times when I returned to London, then forgetting all about it.  Should I have?  Well, should I have?  Oh, who knows?)

…and she muttered something

about missed opportunities, then

she said: “sometimes

I think the lines on my

face are old battle trenches,

or perhaps nonsense

words of X, Y and Zs

scraped by an

illiterate child on an

empty English beach,

and sometimes I think I

speak no more sense

than those.

And sometimes, when I

gaze at myself in the

mirror under the

overcrowded, blonde

antiseptic light, I

see forgotten numbers to

disconnected phones

etched into my scalp.

And I have travelled so

much I hear their voices

taunt me all the time.

They say

‘stand behind the yellow

line, another train will be

along shortly’, and ‘just

think, if you lived

here you’d be

home already’”.