In the Brighton
West Street Odeon
Costas franchise
the three-piece
family to my left
– a mother and two kids –
quite calm before
some animated
candy-floss maybe
and the sea the
colour of blue
jade on a Chinese
Emperor’s ceremonial
armour, visible
shifting its surface at the
plate-glass window
past the counter,
while I read R.S. Thomas
– and he takes a
pretty bleak view of
our human prospects –
between his poems
emphasising the
extreme brevity,
checking the
Grindr App for
no-strings meets or
possibly more,
the selection of men
apparently endless.
