Introducing
Gwil James
Thomas
02. 01. 2025.
A sensational tangerine sun rises
over the shanty town in Castle Park.
A haggard looking man stops a bus,
just to step onboard
and spit at the bus driver -
before he walks off
sputtering gibberish to himself.
Snapped police-tape limply flaps
in the wind from a lamppost -
like an already distant reminder
of last month’s festive madness.
The cold pavements are a montage
of broken glass, half eaten kebabs,
piss and empty drug packets.
Welcome to a new season
of survival in the city.
A new year, a new me?
That joke is getting
thinner than my hairline.
I clock into work, I clock out of work
and I limp home in the dark -
firmly locking the door behind me.
Hear that?
Yes, absolutely nothing, beautiful isn’t it?
I crack my knuckles and contemplate.
I will try again with this year with tomorrow -
or whenever and wherever it is
that our tomorrows haphazardly arrive.
Running With The Wild Heart.
She fucked like humanity
was on the brink of extinction,
spat words into the air
with cobra like venom,
knew sadness
as a hellhound on her trail
that could never quite reach her,
let her love take flight
like an albatross
sailing high on compassion,
before she
disappeared -
like a fox
through woodlands upon hearing
gunshots.
January ’25 Haiku.
Los Angeles burns
London is a frozen ATM
Bristol still stagnant.
The Rock of Gibraltar.
The merciless midday sun
beat down on the tall and tenacious rock,
as monkeys leapt onto our shoulders -
hit a pensioner and eventually
fought over a child’s Monster Munch.
Across The Straight of Gibraltar,
I watched the waves furiously lap
against the coast of Tangier and Africa.
Well that was that and at that I took
the cable-car as it shuddered all the way
down the rock, before I reached a high street
and sat down with a pint in the shade –
across the road a man chain smoked
outside the bookies, a drunken couple argued,
whilst Union Jacks waved in the wind –
all of it feeling so familiar and yet out of place,
like the way dreams blend time places and people.
Building a hunger, I stared at the supermarket’s
shelves of ready meals and dry sandwiches
and considered that I’d head back to Spain -
already salivating for fresh gazpacho,
tortilla de patatas and calamari -
or anything besides British foreign muck.
