Urban landscapes
Rumbling along in the London West End The industrial wastelands early morning wake-up A pinkish sky dotted with hurried commuter clouds Barbed wire bouquets and miradores rise from the shadows Keeping the precious out of whatever harm’s way Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
High winds wrap a long bandage of clouds Over the festering wounds of the megapolis And the windows, in their shining arrogance Threaten your precious neck with their guillotines Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
Austere and abrupt like a death sentence Stone-faced walls rise in a windowless silence They keep their little secrets locked inside Letting ribbons of sky and narrow rays of light Seep through their narrow apertures Shadows paint grotesque changing shapes in the sunset An abstract evening gown that the night will steal away Photo Hugh […]
Keeping an eye for tidal waves to come A London mariner stands on the deck London is an island in an island Everything will come from the sea The Normans the Danes and the “who knows” Would it be so different if it was the Caribbean ? Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
Flipping the bird to the stormy skies gathering over London city Like a Sauron’s (not Sauro’s) tower of iced vanity and steel Like a new-age “Rastignac” taunting the city Of the Balzac story of rag to riches, and back We live at the hinge of historic times Where we will get our fingers squashed Photo […]
The crosses’ last station at St Paul’s A cathedral’s dome rising like a golden nipple where heaven comes to suckle Believers and voyeurs rush helter skelter through the underground passages But Jesus does not need an oyster when he can walk on water So Caesar got his money back, a refund from above interest included […]
We dream, and we dream that we love, but it is just a dream And the whirling waters of life flow under the bridge The crowds on the bridge watch mesmerized, looking for a sign But their destiny just floats away, unrecognized In the distance the great towers of vanity stand tall Pretending to be […]
The sky pattern reflects on the riverside mud River Thames barrier has a mathematical mind of its own It will compute the tidal effect and the river flow and all thing super-human It is a machine with no room for poetry just steel and concrete locks But nature plays around and above laughing at the […]
Cycle and re-cycle like some flawed magic trick Rubbish heaps grow into mountains, cable cars rise to new heights The dismal skylines of a runaway cornucopia consumer society Packed in airtight containers and shipped to economic colonies Symbolic ride from East India on the Emirates Meridian Line Photo Hugh Ardoin The Urban Landscapes Gallery
Appearing at the River Thames shores near the barrier lock Spiraling towers that I imagine as Tolkien’s Rivendell Castle The elven king’s last refuge stands here shining under heavy skies We are part of our fantasy when we make pictures with one eye closed We wake when the shutter snaps to a CCTV world where […]