It cries like Rutger Hauer from the rooftops
and sings itself to sleep mechanical lullabies
doubting that it has a soul

as the rain falls to its knees.
It crashes against jagged rocks sometimes.
It drags itself like litter through streets

over broken umbrellas and strewn films strips
from back street theatres
left miserable in the opera noir

of blader runner blue rains.
It drags itself through discarded photographs,
over other peoples left over smiles

and rainy day weddings;
through puddles of confetti and cans on strings
dragged from bonnets.

It drags itself like nails down chalkboard equations
it drags itself like Shakespeare’s sonnets
through disenchanted classrooms.

You never think to look under the fingernails of the world
to find the dirt that is my heart sometimes
wishing to be left there.

A nostalgic radio drowning
begging you to save it from the
torment of its own lovesick songs.

An anchor that will dig into you
and beat in sync to yours
like an echo that tries and tries to confirm itself.

It is the pavement artist trying to sell
his desperate paintings in the hurried footsteps
trampling over his chalk aspirations.

It is a bucket of cold water full
of drowned sparklers
where past lovers have been burnt.

It is the bag you sometimes see
choking on the railings
like a ghosts accordion.

Or it is the metaphor in fur and sixties pearls that
forever tries to re-imagine itself
to someone younger.

Someone whose heart is still
like a girl running free,
dragging a stick along sunlit railings

that flicker epileptic
as sparklers that go out
when passed to the wrong hands.