Work In Progress - A Rewrite

I is lying
In the sun, feeling its warmth spread over me
A heat I ain’t felt in a long ago time. I bathing in it
Letting its radiance thaw out my bones.
Now a clear, warm rain
Is falling upon me, like showering morning-time.
I dreaming.
I not want to wake, but laughter draws me to consciousness.

When I come to I’m not sunbathing, not showering.
I’m surrounded
Grinning faces
Black boots
Dark slacks all around
They aren’t here to help me, to be nice.
Song runs through my head and I can’t resist a whistle
Even as the first kicks arrive like London buses: in threes.
Singing: “There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance.”
Not the latter. Though. Anything but.
I close my eyes, try to picture
Nat King Cole
Singing smooth on telly-vision, but
The pain starts to bring me back to…
Subway
Cardboard
Half-empty bottle of something caustic yet alcoholic.
That’s where I am.
Fenced in a ring of boots
Of fists
Of violence.
After numerous kicks, punches and a smattering of urine streams hitting my face
It stops
And I’m somewhere between sleep and consciousness again, but
The reverie of Nat has gone
The sun has passed behind a black cloud and
Won’t come out again until it feels the morning calling it.

It’s strange
Really weird: you’d think that a beaten old man like me might get more change in his cup;
You’d think that people would feel pity
See that life can be cruel
Perhaps even help that beaten person report incidents to the police
But no.
See, the police were my antagonists not louts
Youths, lads, kids; hoodies as referred to in large print headlines – for the hard of seeing so they can understand that the world is to be feared.
Life ain’t what you think, what’s reported.
You try living it, just once.
Reckon you’ll be shrinking back under your rocks
In your shells
Behind your doors; pretty darn quick.
So would I, choices be provided.
What you won’t be doing is throwing pretty circles of metal
Into a poly-something cup.
Dried blood is scary
A concept not seen in the ‘burbs where they prefer
To sweep their hideousness beneath carpets imported from Turkey or Iran
Or wall-to-wall plush pile.
Not even my girl comes to cheer me today.
P’raps she’d not recognised me?
The suck-cess-full success from long time-back. Me, the high-flier touching down.

Or maybe I’m still in the throes of a crash-landing?