England

London knows its history and laughs about it.

It is a serious matter. 

Londoners are myriads of pale and dark tears. 

A Russian downs a Vodka at 11 A.M on the bus. 

The Filipino barista serves up a skinny latte and wraps her 

mind around her new accent. 

Everyone watches everyone. No body looks at you. 

CCTV watches and looks at everything

on the bus, the station, the stall, the stairway, 

the workplace, the dorms, your room, 

your patterns. wherever you go, they follow. 

Scotland Yard's finest do fear with no gun but 

a dark baton encapsulating all hope of swelling. 

It rains, horizontally the way i saw it. 

It is cold, and i'm Canadian. 

Its not the weather i'm talking about. 

But the intimacy, a type of mercy deficiency. 

A lack of outward compassion. 

I have faith it is there, hidden around sarcastic frigid remarks. 

Or maybe they are used to it, 

watching others struggle while you laugh at the irony of a colony. 

They say when all hope is gone and faith is exhausted 

the oppressed embrace their oppressor 

like the merciful embrace their mothers.