18

Speech crawls a slow corona; cobbles tense in bubbled corrosion. Sensing slippage seeping collides without, swung up or overloaded full to the brim. Tea drips over walrus avatar lost friendships fog the Thames stream currents makes faces of lonely ghosts; most wash up near Tilbury or further or never. Bruised fingers snap a sharp reality clicked into place; mid-stream mystic smokes over Albion river rain is here but not here; empty trains shuttle back and forth to Liverpool St. These empty places exact their revenge eventually. Hoover it up the blood says. 

                                                                         19 

Collectively, rashly, the swains boat follows the river swell east towards the mouth of the estuary. Stranded mid-stream dirge of coelacanth’s brown black mud stinging the eyes face and hearts heavy with leaded glances. Oars lifted now wading forwards pulling the bell’s fire gouging in its wake a mud bound scrying trail. An ironed out flat sky; “You’ll never get there’” they cry, “turn back it’s fruitless.” Pointlessly with purpose we slough on over drift strata of rusted carts and failed millennial outposts; memories of Thameside alpine excursions faces towards the blizzard.