11 Months in London

As I turn left off Oxford Street
cloaked in a low sky and shuffling
along with the other furrowed brows

I search for the accents of my youth
“Tomato” or “Tomahto” or “Tomata.”
“Aunt” or “Ant” or “Auntie”

Punching my cold fists into a
Harrods jacket I enter the tube,

shortly reaching a grey gray
station and see the pub with an
old fashioned clock against the
familiar liquored mirror,

damn, it’s way past our meeting time,
and
am I at the right place?

I really could go for
comfort food now, we need this

Connection

“Buffalo Wings?” Or is it “Fish and Chips?”
Maybe “Saltfish?”

Which of these do I want?
Eh, it’s too late for such a search.

A sudden hiss of wind
angrily flaps my jacket, and
a raindrop

taps my shoulder—
as a stranger does when they have
wandered too far and need
direction.

The Dark Matter of Graduation Day

Dark Matter – noun – Nonluminous material in the universe
not seen by the naked eye.

Graduation day –

and later (with fake ID) that night: 
A hotel room, booze, trilled song!
 
You raid the hotel room liquor bar!

Some years later

shuffling towards a cornered cubicle 
drooped in your ergonomic chair with
caffeine to replace blood and computer to
displace brain, there under the slow tick of
the clock metering a motionless march.

                            A jet lag 

 hotel rooms of icy paintings staring over

                            nothing, 

             delving days with stormy eyes 
                            searching
a sea of fleshy faces and plastic convention
name tags of lives mapped and wrapped,
stomachs filled with free shrimp, 
clutching drink tokens (“Good for One Drink!”)

soon they are slumped on the bar – pale and
pot bellied, like cadavers dissected in medical school.

You retreat to the 12th floor and remember
your hero, Siddhartha Buddha, who it 
has been said -during his brief ascetic phase,

working in a pottery production shop, walked off
the job one day – “Thank God I’m outta that place,”
he murmered and then smiled – to no one in particular.  

You raid the hotel room liquor bar, then

lay back on hard springs and 
await the unshaven jaws of dawn.

Editor’s Note on Tony Walton Poetry:

Tony Walton Poetry is not the first collection that Tony Walton has had published in Eastlit. Apart from Tony Walton Poetry, he has previously featured work as listed:

• Two Poems published in the October 2013 issue of Eastlit.