The early bird gets the big price, red & blue
balloons orb the doors,
bowls of peanuts &
crisps on the Quickslip Desk, jockeys wait

to go over the top of Beecher's Brook
in luminescent stripes like danger needs
a dusting of hundreds & thousands

- well that's why we're watching -
outside two middleaged men seriously
playfight as their young sons watch
trying not to catch the eyes of the other.
I push the pram past an unmanned buggy
which has been left next to a GOLDSKIP
of used bricks. Coming back much later
after the poetry reading in Covent Garden
- a past midnight of Spring ice - the driver
of the Transit cab could be one of the men
from today's playfight. He says : cheer up,
it might never happen. He pleasantly talks
past me like I am the clothes in his wardrobe.
I say : it already has, I've spent all my money
on the National & I'm not even drunk. He asks
how I failed to pick the winner, though he
hasn't told his wife about his winnings yet.
I say : isn't marriage the biggest gamble
and he says No : that was buying his house.
His faraway look is the clash of the tragedy
in the hope of love & the materials beyond
compassion. At least he had today's winner -
Comply or Die

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