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i. fungus grey flutters the grid of buildings amid the fungal layers of dreich novembral cloud a city painted pale by their shadows lacking chlorophyll spilling rain like the sweat of the city dwellers dressed in black and white and grey absorbed within the wheezing breaths of the urban mass a bus door sucking open closed inhaling and exhaling the emptied 7.30 crowd into the almost morning caffeine wakened crepuscules of labour off to the tap tap tap of the keyboard computer breakfasts gulped to the syncopated trills of the office till i slam the door to my tenemented stairwell stumble into daylight my bicycle wheels spinning clockwise clockwork running late and then i hear the sound the monotonic beat beat beat of geese wings heading south ii. chlorophyll the sun has turned the people different shades of green their veins are chloroplasts pumping with the samba beats of summer listless lips are sipping on their chardonnay melon kiwi apple tinge the wine to green olives spill their oil to grass unboxed neighbours mingle in the suburb village square a triangle whose apex points towards the river unpolluted children green like algae adults wilt the oak tree canopy that’s shading them survives another day unpatented as strengths of chlorophyllic blood are announced in green beech tree willow sycamore are pushing bicycles and licking ice creams from the deli yet as peppers ripen red and olives black the leaves in turn will turn 10
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iii. unboxed boxes stack untidily on top of one another outside the superstore half way up a mile long street i’m found alone inside the shop with twenty other people albinoed like my pansliced bread the wine i bought from the shop just down the road i’m semi skimmed i’m over pasteurised my coppers count the contrasts on my palm one to thirty nine i break the line of coca cola light translated into arabic my offerings to this store are aubergines and okra coriander ginger ghee the voice behind the till breaks into english just for me we watch the boxes stack untidily on top of one another take our turns removing from the middle of the jenga stack iv. milk i think a melody was born last night at 3.15am entangled in its minor key unlocking harmonies the melody is blind in 9:8 time i watch it growing visibly more painful semiquavers rushing to the silence which i fear she woke to memory of the night before a solemn bassline pushing through the curving tubes of the contra bassoon i guess she wishes for a visual scar a broken leg some carcrash whiplash stitches from a fall i did not know that girl walking home around the corner yet tonight she makes me dream of milk my mother’s breasts a nursery school bottle whiteness scattering my cereal and my boxed in kitchen muffling out all sound 11

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i. fungus grey flutters the grid of buildings amid the fungal layers of dreich novembral cloud a city painted pale by their shadows lacking chlorophyll spilling rain like the sweat of the city dwellers dressed in black and white and grey absorbed within the wheezing breaths of the urban mass a bus door sucking open closed inhaling and exhaling the emptied 7.30 crowd into the almost morning caffeine wakened crepuscules of labour off to the tap tap tap of the keyboard computer breakfasts gulped to the syncopated trills of the office till i slam the door to my tenemented stairwell stumble into daylight my bicycle wheels spinning clockwise clockwork running late and then i hear the sound the monotonic beat beat beat of geese wings heading south ii. chlorophyll the sun has turned the people different shades of green their veins are chloroplasts pumping with the samba beats of summer listless lips are sipping on their chardonnay melon kiwi apple tinge the wine to green olives spill their oil to grass unboxed neighbours mingle in the suburb village square a triangle whose apex points towards the river unpolluted children green like algae adults wilt the oak tree canopy that’s shading them survives another day unpatented as strengths of chlorophyllic blood are announced in green beech tree willow sycamore are pushing bicycles and licking ice creams from the deli yet as peppers ripen red and olives black the leaves in turn will turn

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