Mumbai.

Walking the streets

are haggard children:

far too torn and ragged

a picture of youth;

feet hard with miles

of incessant walking -

like somnambulants endlessly

walking through infinite deserts.

Their eyes are broken,

but somehow still full of

the colour of youth.

Their faces are beautiful,

and yet tell of a struggle

that's been wreaked

since time's conception.

They sell anything they can find;

steal anything they can find -

just to buy lentils and rice
and keep clothed and dry.

Sewerage lines overflow

into the streets,

and children

bathe in the water.

All's not well in Mumbai,

or Detroit, or Flint,

or Wigan, or Bristol,

or Beijing, or Ulan Bator;

all is not well.

Your whitener,

and your methamphetamine,

and your presciption pills,

and Valium and Zantac and Vicodin;

all is not well.

It's part of a culture

that we're creating,

but which we'll never know;

it carries on like some shoddily written tragedy

shown in a broken theatre;

God bless the world.