The City Dead

This is a poem I wrote when I was in Budapest three years ago. It contains everything I did and felt about the city but I highly doubt it makes sense to anyone but me. But my next post will be the diary I kept in Budapest to see if that clarifies anything. Each stanza is for a different day.

I.

descend into heat-filled graffiti-lined and boarded
homes of homeless bundled dirtied
’til cool air drops to meet you, streets like canals
wide raced through by lights
the stone a canvas absent blank and beautiful.

buried places calling, music laughter long-forgotten
echoes bouncing off the quiet moulded, hang your coat
and drown beneath high ceilings ancestral colours
in thousands, you will feel alone.

bars and locks and darkness leer beneath balconies,
smoke and talk emerge from subterraneous
holes and at once space, and this untouched
and silent, alive or a corpse suspended.

II.

dawn breaks empty horns and wheels and frantic
mismatched beauties lined up, headphones please
this quiet, gather and meet or cower, bury fears
fathoms beneath, the dark will wind its way
around your throat, you are watched.

it is safe: apple ginger spice and soft familiar
butterless, a first kiss fog and fantasy from
fishermen to domed and grand and magic
hold your breath and run beneath olive leaves.

there are secrets here, the knowing’s in it
little pieces of a world long lost, not stolen
broken jealously hidden away and guarded,
wave-bound illuminating in the pitch it breathes.

III.

sunlight in the grey sharp and cuts and glows
on quests unfound and hopes unlived
the secrets here are that unnative unknown
and: exposed loyalty finds terror in putrid
cells, the light dances on the crucifix.

culture is dying, identity sighs
in juts and folds and spokes it glances up
a cello on the foot a car park laughing
music flares a chuckle a cough behind doors,

behind doors. in gold the heights, the heights
in red another world transported leaping
kicking fighting singing it is vital, vibrant
in half-lit rooms it stirs and jerks and gasps and lives.