The quiet street - Part 1

Hostel New York, Carrer Gignas

Pt. 1: Close enough to but far away enough from Las Ramblas

Friends are close by

Neighbours cough and weeze French – or is it Russian?

-on the balcon three metres away

And across the narrow street divide North Africans

Take refuge behind cardboard and duct tape-covered windows,

Suitcases, ladders and wooden stools piled high in their

Peeling paint corridors

Too, I see trucker-capped white boys rolling a hashish joint.

What pent-up conversations do they have perched on

Barely fifty centimetres of outdoor space, I wonder.

Scooters and bicycles and rave music continue up and down and

All around, it’s half past midnight and my revelling dorm-mate

Strangers have yet to return.

The ends of my nerves are roughened already.

I’m ok in this urban Catalonian space

Where the light of the sun barely seems to matter.

Perhaps the morning will figure in a brief silence

Before action.  Perhaps siesta mindspace should take effect

And I learn to share my presence with these other Earthly wanderers.

Carrer d’Ataulf and your calming green health pharmacy sign,

Take these huge bricks and wrought-iron heavinesses

And loosen up the what now brow of this weary and season sick

But curious dreamer for the next two eves, please.

We have quite some distance to go.

This is the quiet street.  Close enough to but far away enough from

Las Ramblas.

black koki & ink on black paper