[This is yet another lazy repost in response to the 14^th Finding Everyday Inspiration prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/blogging-university/writing-everyday-inspiration/. I have altered the poem very slightly since I last posted it a couple of years ago.]

 

Daylight Hours

Day begins with the deserted streets a sea

of discarded kebab-wrappers

blown by gentle wind

through pools of puke

deposited outside pubs.

*

Huddled figures finish late-shifts

or are off to an early start.

Papers replete with right-wing propaganda

pile up outside newsagents and are bought up by curious workers along the way.

and street-sweepers with

their water jets and whirring machines

appear in the crisp light of a sun

peeking and winking at them

round the corners and in the windows

of a low-rise landscape of benign limestone buildings

that is home.

*

The veins of the city clog

with vehicles

in treacly slow-moving lines.

Car-parks and pavements fill.

Shops and schools open their doors with a yawn.

Traffic-police and caretakers do their job.

*

Food trucks line up

and those already obese

queue up to punctuate their work

with lunchtime treats

under a sweltering mid-day sun.

Sweat their way back to work.

*

The afternoon,

since siestas became unacceptable,

is a long sinking feeling

declining towards evening,

buoyed by spoonfuls of sugar in coffee cups,

as birds chirp and congregate to roost

and the petals of flowers close up shop for the night.

Bats wheel around in the dusk,

swooping down to pick up discarded fruit.

The litter pickers with their children’s unwashed unshod

feet dangling from the back of a cart do their rounds.

Dad’s wiry muscles sternly humping rubbish up onto the flat bed

of a truck. Mom up the duff again. Kids messing around.

Shouting.

*

A slow parade of cars

wends its way honkingly homewards

to luxury apartments, perched high in the descending night,

under the sliver of a new moon.