We see the tree lit up in books:
A stabbed-at metaphor for where we’re heading.
Projected knowledge - for bright futures
We’ll invent a structure in its image.

Protracted light spikes up on the horizon,
Speaking meagre dreams;
You’re asleep.
We don’t want to wake you from smiling.

Streets cajoled into silence by our gluttonous gaze.
Eyed up imperfections
From beyond the waterfront discarded,
Arid Quarters dominate, appropriating life.

It’s all about face.

‘What’s Goin’ On?’ leaks through spaces
left by broken buildings and rubbed out edges.
The decay of forgotten lives…
…the stream of urgencies…sshhh…
…the pool of unrecorded losses…sshhh…

…reforms itself
around the granite backdrop
as skin and blood congeal
after trauma.

We have all been stabbed in the eye.

Escape the hypnosis of images.
Candy-coated surfaces burn holes through
humanity
In the City of Light.

Dr Victoria Morgan has a PhD in English Literature and has research interests in women's writing and spirituality. She is co-editor of a collection of essays, which includes by Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, called Shaping Belief: Culture, Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Writing (Liverpool University Press, 2008). She teaches English Literature in the UK and writes poetry whenever she can. She can be contacted at vnmorgan@hotmail.com