My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about.
He says it used to be a farm,
Before the Motor Law.
And on Sundays I elude the Eyes,
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire,
Where my white-haired uncle waits.

Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the Borderline.
Run like the wind,
As excitement shivers up and down my spine.
Down in his barn,
My uncle preserved for me an old machine,
For fifty-odd years.
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream.

I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car.
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better, vanished time.
I fire up the willing engine,
Responding with a roar.
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime...

Wind!
In my hair!
Shifting and drifting!
Mechanical music!
Adrenalin surge...

Well-weathered leather,
Hot metal and oil,
The scented country air.
Sunlight on chrome,
The blur of the landscape,
Every nerve aware.

Suddenly ahead of me,
Across the mountainside,
A gleaming alloy air-car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide.
I spin around with shrieking tires,
To run the deadly race,
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase.

Drive like the wind,
Straining the limits of machine and man.
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I've got a desperate plan.
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded at the riverside.
Race back to the farm, to dream with my uncle at the fireside.
 

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage.

Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act,
With insufficient tact,
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact.

Living in the Limelight,
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem.

Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation,
Get on with the fascination,
The real relation,
The underlying theme.

Living in a fisheye lens,
Caught in the camera eye.
I have no heart to lie,
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.

All the world's indeed a stage,
And we are merely players,
Performers and portrayers,
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage.
  

I.

Grim-faced and forbidding,
Their faces closed tight,
An angular mass of New Yorkers
Pacing in rhythm,
Race the oncoming night,
They chase through the streets of Manhattan.
Head-first humanity,
Pause at a light,
Then flow through the streets of the city.

They seem oblivious
To a soft spring rain,
Like an English rain
So light, yet endless
From a leaden sky.

The buildings are lost
In their limitless rise.
My feet catch the pulse
And the purposeful stride.

I feel the sense of possibilities,
I feel the wrench of hard realities.
The focus is sharp in the city.

II.

Wide-angle watcher
On life's ancient tales,
Steeped in the history of London.

Green and grey washes
In a wispy white veil
Mist in the streets of Westminster.
Wistful and weathered,
The pride still prevails,
Alive in the streets of the city.

Are they oblivious
To this quality?
A quality
Of light unique to
Every city's streets.

Pavements may teem
With intense energy,
But the city is calm
In this violent sea.
  

Unstable condition,
A symptom of life,
In mental and environmental change.

Atmospheric disturbance,
The feverish flux
Of human interface and interchange.

The impulse is pure;
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference.

Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence.

A tired mind become a shape-shifter,
Everybody need a mood lifter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to deviate from the norm.

An ounce of perception,
A pound of obscure.
Process information at half speed.
Pause, rewind, replay,
Warm memory chip,
Random sample, hold the one you need.

Leave out the fiction,
The fact is, this friction
Will only be worn by persistence.

Leave out conditions,
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence.

A tired mind become a shape-shifter,
Everybody need a soft filter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm...