With stealth we slide through the outer zones

On the track from city to white sands

Steel squealing serpentine

Our battered vessel traversing boundaries

Gazing through its grimy prisms

Merseyside daytrippers stripping

The backyards with our eyes

Wasteland safari

Urban excursion

Stone-faced clones multiply to infinity

We slow to savour a slab of luscious ruin

The arid wilds, a lockup plaza

War-torn playground concrete ghetto

The savage youth seldom seen

From frescoed walls their stadium dreams rebound

Distant towering silver forest shifting with the changing light

Heat haze mirage never dreamt of, never reached

Then a transitory vision;

We are strangers in our own terrain

The moment when I understand

I’ve seen it all wrong before

Igniting a memory of fallen empires

We are receptors

We are projectors

Roman courtyard birdsong echo, monumental sweet decay

The mask of banality slips briefly to reveal

An exotic smile

Pedestrian turned to alabaster, familiar in alien guise

Tableau vivant

Frozen motion

I did once search but now it’s gone

And anyway

It could never be again

It was just passing scenery