John Short

EARLY MORNING

		Waking each day as dawn
		sends a curtain-crack of light
		over insomniac poetry,
		fat pigeons strut the roof.
		
		I get bored with repetition,
		always sleeping just four hours
		then mandatory attendance
		at the roll call of reality.

		In this incidental drama
even Love has a dubious genesis,
a chance meeting on streets
where we may not have walked.

You’re home from night shift
about now in a distant land. 
		As the morning’s anxiety
		pulls rugs from under my feet.
		
	
REFERENCE POINTS

		Barcelona

		Life had come adrift,
		a beloved city going mad,
		war bulletins on screen
		but we’d sleep away daylight
		like night creatures
		and descend to greet the stars
		then tour the bodegas 
		and bars, and each one
		would dissolve behind us.
		like a stale aspiration.

		It seemed the end was close,
		clubs were throbbing
		with an apocalyptic euphoria
		yet here it all remains
		some years down the line,
		the city changed and pulsing
		to a different flavour of madness
		so now, I circulate again
		to check the reference points
		and see – how much 
		they dared remove from me.

Flights, Issue Fourteen, November 2024