skyscrapers

Notnormal

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Notnormal

Lightningwhite
vast rib vaults
suspended
in brilliantblue
and a rainbow frame
dazzling and doubling and
tripling
around Broadwater Farm.

Large deep-yellow flower shaped like a star with five points.Four feet tracing
pavements pathways
the brooks underground
the trains underground
with the windinyourhair
and the sunonyourskin.

Fivefoldflame flowers
dancing for joy
rolling up into fruit
while ivory butterflies
and bumblebees feed
on lavender forests.

Time to cook
food and eat
food
Time to talk
into a telephone
time to talk
Orange soup in blue bowl on placemat striped orange and blue.talkandlisten
Timetogether.

All this is not normal.

All this is mental
detrimental
to your output
to your outfit
on all platforms
detrimental
to your attitudes
to your platitudes
diametrical
to the narrative.

This is the new
Notnormal.
This must stop
fullstop.

Kestrel egg, quite round, buff and dappled.Otherwise
more stained statues will fall
and heads of heads will roll
and skyscrapers skygraters
surveying the Thames
will be kestrels’ apartments
their amenities reclaimed
by the reeds and the weeds
by the swans and the swifts
by the songs in the dusk
and the
silence
under the crystal crescent.

Christina Egan © 2020

Hoping for a revolution in the suspended time of the C-19 pandemic…

Under the lockdown, the air had become so clear that on May 1st, 2020, I did see a triple rainbow around the apartment blocks of Broadwater Farm.

For more thoughts from the first phase of the pandemic in London in spring 2020, see Hidden Rivers / Verborgne Flüsse.

Courgette flower / Carrot soup. Photographs: Christina Egan © 2020. — Kestrel egg at the Muséum de Toulouse. Photograph by Didier Descouens via Wikimedia. Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Glass Mountain (Potsdamer Platz)

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Glass Mountain
(Potsdamer Platz)

Lights above you, lights around you,
shifting blue and mauve and pink,
lights below you, lights surround you,
pierce the black and loom and shrink.

Glass fronts of enormous silos
mask the dusk and stare and blink,
figures wander in the windows,
lifts in tubes float up and sink.

Water basins spread around you
shifting blue and mauve and pink,
glass roofs open in the ground, too,
names flare up in mirror print.

Glass façades and water fountain
multiply the hum and glint:
you have stepped inside a mountain,
you are trapped in steely pink,

trapped beside a thousand others,
lulled by murmur and gay tunes,
screened from sun and stars and weathers
by a tent-roof in sweet blues.

Futuristic glass buildings, pointed and rounded, illuminated in blue and pink; in the corner, old facade visible beneath.

Then you see the stucco hover,
curling in a livid tint;
chandeliers unfurl and quiver;
then you hear the glasses clink…

Have you dreamt of the Titanic
or of old Potsdamer Platz?
No, this is the real relic,
the hotel that dodged the Blitz

and kept spinning through the nightmare
of the void swept by the wind –
sad and splendid sole survivor
under glass and neon pink.

Christina Egan © 2017

Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz, with old façade visible beneath the glass (here, in pink). Photograph: Pedelecs by Wikivoyage and Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

For a German poem on the old, vanished, Potsdamer Platz, look at the sonnet Nächster Halt: Potsdamer Platz.

Word cloud on black, most words pale, some words glaring. In the middle, "glass", "steel", "doors", "sun".

Word cloud Steel & Glass. Christina Egan ©2024.
Developed from twelve poems about big cities on
this website, with some colours of the scene above.
See more at When Webs of Steel / Von stählernen Waben.
Many thanks to the Simple Word Cloud Generator.