So To Bed

Just after midnight


The train only needs to be twelve minutes late
To allow the announcer to say:
'Good morning and welcome to Manchester’.
Disgorging past shell shocked faces,
those who missed their last train home,
and those who are still running with hope,
I guess who will chase taxis and who will walk.
Outside, the sky is battered black and blue,
brewing a soup of voice, throttle and bass,
pinpricks of life behind windows and hoods,
I run red lights whilst others wait.

A line of lads juggles unsteadily,
bottles in hand, a poor substitute
for any flesh and I look down,
only once have I crossed the road.

Then a theatre doorway,
in which I have seen a teenage girl drunk in a fractured white dress, a man who stared through me with piercing white eyes, three different homeless men, two in sleeping bags, one under torn cardboard, all grubby from the detritus of the city, a woman, her ankles held together by purple knickers, and another, suited, sheltering from the rain,

because sometimes it rains,
thick midnight rain,
spotted by taxis and late night bicycles,
whilst the buses flee down Oxford Road.
The pavements are thick with students,
one end of their journey a club.

A man plays an accordion,
a man plays an oboe,
a man plays a guitar,
but even as I scuttle past,
and later in my bed,
I hear the tunes repeat.