Howard Firkin
(like every other)
It’s just
as well we haven’t met
today I wouldn’t know what to say you’d say
you’re looking well while I was looking
for a café and you’d say I can’t stop anyway
smile
and pass the briefest time of day
and goodbye good to meet and I would walk
the other way or cross the street.

Dragged ragged over bitumen
beneath a thousand stranger soles than mine
my shadow’s wearing thin avoiding you
too successfully to be trying to.
Pause: amazing all the faces that aren’t yours.