The Walk

Annie Lennox Backwards/Forwards mashup

 

He never turned his collar

Against the penetrating
Damp
London cold

Rhythmic footsteps
Beat

On the cobblestone
Street tattering told of

Dickens nightly walk

Hours pressing into dark
Despite

Acrid smoke
Pungent air

Striving

Not for inspiration

But rather

To keep the fiction alive

Despite the drain 

Man’s inhumanity

To man
Seen

The face of a soot covered starving urchin
Contrasting flash

Of the High Victorian Lady's
Flesh

Of an ankle
Escaping the filth of the street

As she knowingly smiled to get on a streetcar

The game of the indecent coquette
Bearing smile
All the while
For it is just a game
Despite
or
To spite?

His audience must know

He saw all

Should he revel in corpses

The rotting flesh trade?

Or turn

To that which made

Life worth living

He would ask himself

He would want
To turn
To... or from?

The breaking tension

Perhaps that’s what made his fiction so real

Without being too real

That line

That balance

That tightrope walk
Exhausting
But necessary

It had to be a good Christmas

Tiny Tim would walk

And no house

Would forever remain bleak

All he had to do

Was continue to walk