Christmas Day 2009 – Kenilworth Centre

The combination of stifling tar-miraged heat

and deserted concrete.



No cars in the parking lot this midday.



Seeking a certain silent atmosphere

and the poetic sense of an apocalypse,

I intentionally stop my car,

get out,

inhale absences,

wonderfully alone

in the vacant centre

of this usually frantic lot.



Around the corner a murmuring.

Street kids dobbeling,

unaware of my meditations.



One hawks, snatches a coin,

hits and curses a littley, bullying.

The dice roll again.

The circle stays closed.



Torn, ashamed whitey,

I avert my eyes, continue walking, stiffly,

disabled by propriety

and Englishness

and forces darker than all Africa,



but steel enters

my heart, my will this day.

Determined, isolated,

desperate to bless;

welcome steel.