The Falling

When the supplies ran out we turned
against the environment that bred us.
When everything stopped we took the
furniture inside: bollards and all.
We lived in the rubble of the big ideas,
ripped the chains off the swings in the
kiddies' playground for rudimentary numchucks.
We could hardly remember singing, as foxes
tripped between the blocks, made home
in the spaces evictees had left.

Yes, we turned against the city
but had not made the first move.
The kebab houses closed, one by one;
pigeon never tasted so good.
We pulled up cables, made speculative
forays north, across the river.
At high tide it ran backwards, east
to west, and we cornered unsuspecting
bears in a ring of steel and velcro.
We tore up branded clobber,
threads from army surplus: twice ironised,
now just necessary. For three whole months
the city was obscured by cloud.
We walked by the light of our phones
when we walked, and when we ran
the ground went underneath so fast
we mistook it for flying.

When the supplies ran out and we ran out,
we took against ourselves in unseen ways.
One goon cut himself at night;
another slept with dogs. The lights went out
from Bond Street to Canary Wharf.
We hunted in packs, mauled our jaws
so we would never remember the way we spoke.
Our fingers traced the layout of the streets;
we mapped the whole geography inside,
kept it safe like a code or a book.
We dreamt of rape - all of us
in one big dream - and a place
beyond the forests that had grown
where the Tube lines stopped.

*

It was a perfect day.
We walked with friends.
There was so much of
everything, we didn't know
what to choose, and so
we chose it all.