I grew up on the vertices of a village heart:
lost in it's pulse; a triangular core
angled around green, off the main arterial thread.
It's apt to abuse a shop-worn metaphor
to invoke that prism of grocer, News, and King's Head;
and the flow of neighbours,
monitored by youth,
as they re-oxygenate on sugar flavours,
carbs, and four per-cent proof;
unconscious of a script
where cells were just passing through.
Chambers would soon be stripped,
like the trinity of stores,
to reveal a boy's scrawl, not meant for review
for a hundred billion beats or more.

And what now, if we carry narratives forward
to somewhere off the flank of a thigh?
The patient awakes to organs laid clear;
finding that cities, like grown ups, lie:
un-anaesthetized,
and that seven years is enough
for an entire body to repair or disappear.