Category Archives: City Living

✩ 99. Kaleidoscope Memories – Published in The Pluralist / No Issue / Beyond Reason

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One cannot help but bear-witness to pandemic storm-clouds-of-contagion, earthquake, volcano, fire, flood and landslide

Ubiquitously sweeping, shaking, erupting, raging, surging, far-and-wide

While many of the world’s leaders profess ‘geo-thermal-fracking-as-usual’ with heads buried-deep in dunes-of-denial

And so, in the face of multiple-global-crises, one is forced to shop elsewhere for spiritual gnoses and emotional renewal

Further afield than the aisles of neon-lit supermarket-dreams and dot-com same-day-deliveries

Further afield than high-brow department-store life-style fantasies

Laid out like scenes from the silver-screen in elaborate window-displays and glossy magazines

Further than the online prime-time trailer, box-set, binge-watch seduction

Plethora’s-of-perfectly-packaged-illusions to provide temporary-alleviation

From the overwhelming threat of global-annihilation

From sexist-racist, elitist-ageist denigration

Or from rust-riddled-regrets on constant-rotation

Mourning the ghosts of narrowly-missed, sugar-coated ships-of-desire that set-sail long-ago

Or impossible-to-forget childhood-traumas, bereavements, divorces, augmenting serial-self-love-deficit-disorders

Inescapable neuroses, seared into one’s psyche, branded like slaves-to-key-frame-memories

Leaving a trail-of-distorted, aborted-destinies behind in their wake

Yet another empty-void, full-of-emotional gaping-holes to fill as the planet is systematically plundered and destroyed

By the addictive machine-of-consumerism, where ecological-sustainability and wellbeing is wilfully-sacrificed

With nothing left, except the bitter-aftertaste of a forfeit-future…

This is how we welcome 130-million new-born ‘kidults’ into the world every-year, weaned upon html and social-media

Whose childhood-innocence and genetic-lineages were surgically-removed at birth

Stolen by neo-narcissists ‘neath smog-filled skies, where bright-futures turned grey

Dumbed-down by smart-technology and antidepressants

And yet, in-spite-of-all-this, some intrinsic built-in desire to seek-out and search for truth-and-authenticity, persists

Sends out its call like a beacon, calling upon every human-soul to awaken, to activate one’s innate inner-knowing, like a homing-device

Beckons to journey far-beyond the comfort and safety of objects, or co-dependent relationships

To look past the emotional barbed-wire snags-and-grazes of parental/ professional/ romantic/ societal lies and betrayal

Or the nettle’s-sting of missed-opportunity

In lieu of moving-forwards, towards new desires-satisfied, and revised goals-fulfilled, collectively

For nothing stays-the-same and ‘change’ is always the one, true, ever-quickening-constant

Henceforth, it is in the ‘unspoken-moments’ where humanity happens

Where one quietly pieces-together water-colour-poems, sifted and fathomed from kaleidoscope-memories

Dreaming in silent smoky-swirls and mirror-gleam sunbeams

Peeling off rose-candy-coloured gels from the lids of one’s eyes

Like fleshy onion-skin layers of reflective-introspection

As one wakes from the lucid-dream-state with the revelatory-understanding

That in a vibrational-universe-of-Energy, every thought and feeling is eternal and therefore accountable

As non-physical energy can never die, nor expire, it can only change form

Transformed by an awareness of one’s perennial-vibrational-offering

Atonement through candour and a willingness to upgrade one’s most-frequent-point-of-focus

As an integral requisite of self-care, a daily-practice

By virtue of LOVE, whether for self, others, or Source

Is still the purest-form-of-energy in the Multiverse. ✩

© i-P Ltd 2022

87. Smart City

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Monopoly2011

Review of 86. Smart City

Sunday 15th June 2014

Overview

Smart City is a fierce social commentary that critiques the modern urban paradigm — especially the ways in which technology, capitalism, and consumer culture intertwine to disempower, distract, and domesticate the human spirit.

It raises urgent questions about indoctrination disguised as education, the erosion of critical thinking, and the illusion of progress in a world where “smart” no longer means wise — but merely trackable, profitable, and compliant.

This poem plays like a dystopian street sermon — a wake-up call against complacency, delivered with lyrical force and intellectual fire.

Imagery and Tone

The imagery is urban-industrial, hypermodern, and metaphorically charged. There’s a strong use of allegory and pop-cultural reference — from Monopoly’s “Do not pass Go” to “another brick in the wall” — that aligns the poem with resistance culture and countercultural critique.

Terms like:

  • “Brick-in-the-wall” / “Cog-in-the-machine” – evoke systemic dehumanisation
  • “Caged like a wild animal” / “Zoo” / “Swallowed the smart sim pill” – suggest surveillance, behavioural conditioning, and loss of agency
  • “Road to Blandsville” / “Downtown Homogenisation” – infuse bleakness with sharp irony

The tone is blistering, unapologetic, and urgent — a poetic manifesto against the numbing effects of algorithmic life and blind consumerism.

Why This Poem Matters

Smart City matters because it challenges the normalisation of digital conformity and the erosion of soulful living under the glossy veneer of “progress.”

While society often celebrates technological advancement as inherently good, this poem argues that the cost has been:

  • The commodification of identity
  • The suppression of individuality
  • The silencing of dissent through distraction

The poem speaks especially to those who’ve begun to question the machine but haven’t yet found the language to articulate what feels wrong. Smart City gives those intuitions form, voice, and velocity.

It doesn’t just ask, “What is the price of modern life?” — it declares that we are already paying it. Daily. Often without even realising.

Imagery and Tone Summary

  • Imagery: Urban entrapment, consumerist dystopia, technology as control, education as indoctrination
  • Tone: Sardonic, intense, disillusioned, fiercely awakening

Why It Belongs in the Collection

This poem is a critical puzzle piece in the overarching arc of the collection. Many earlier poems explore personal growth, inner liberation, betrayal, love, and loss. Smart City widens the lens to take on systemic dysfunction — showing how even personal disconnection is often seeded in cultural and political dysfunction.

It resonates thematically with:

  • Bread and Circus (media distraction and loss of civic values)
  • Golden Nuggets (alternative truths vs capitalist indoctrination)
  • Snakes and Ladders (awakening and resistance to social masks)

It offers a necessary jolt to the reader — and acts as a sobering contrast to more contemplative or spiritual pieces, without being disconnected from them. The poem reminds us that spiritual evolution is not just personal — it’s also political.

Final Thoughts

Smart City is unflinching in its commentary, and precisely because of that, it holds tremendous value. It demands attention — not for shock, but for awakening. It’s an indictment of the systems that dull our senses and a reclaiming of the right to question, to see clearly, and to opt out of default programming.

This poem absolutely deserves its place in the collection — not just for its message, but for the clarity, boldness, and skill with which it’s delivered.

86. Window

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Inner City Sanctuary

Review of 85. Window
Sunday 4th May 2014

Overview

Window is a gentle, grounded meditation on belonging, acceptance, and the evolution of inner perception. It captures the poignant shift from disenchantment to gratitude — a transformation so subtle and personal, yet universally relatable.

Where once the speaker longed for a different vista — a different life, a different view — they now find peace and reverence in the very details that once stirred restlessness. It’s a poem about the slow alchemy of contentment, and the quiet rediscovery of joy exactly where you are.

Imagery and Tone

The imagery is intimately domestic and observational, rich in sensory texture: the “hessian weave of blinds,” “chimney stacks and pots,” “slate rooftops,” and “higgledy-piggledy aerials.” These tactile details situate the poem firmly within a lived urban environment, evoking the small, often-overlooked sights and sounds of city life.

But there’s a sonic rhythm too — the “wailing sirens,” “whir of helicopters,” “horn of the nonstop train,” and “roar of aeroplanes” create an auditory collage of modern living. These once-invasive sounds are now heard as part of a greater harmony, subsumed into “the humming soup of the city’s low rumble.”

The tone is reflective, peaceful, quietly triumphant. There’s no fanfare in the transformation — just a deeply personal recognition that sanctuary isn’t always a place you find — it’s often a place you finally see.

Why This Poem Matters

Window matters because it honours the slow, inner journey from dissatisfaction to appreciation — a journey most people undergo, yet rarely articulate with such tender precision.

In a culture addicted to movement, aspiration, and escape, the poem offers a counterpoint of rooted presence. It acknowledges the very human desire to seek something better — a “different view” — but subverts the cliché by showing that homecoming doesn’t always require a change of location, just a change in perspective.

It’s a poem of emotional and spiritual ripening — one that doesn’t reject longing, but matures through it. The moment of arriving — of finally recognising sanctuary — is profound in its simplicity, and moving in its quiet truth.

Imagery and Tone Summary

  • Imagery: Bedroom blinds, rooftop silhouettes, birdsong, urban skies, aircraft trails
  • Sound: Layers of city noise — sirens, helicopters, trains — resolving into a symphonic backdrop
  • Tone: Reflective, softly contented, grateful, meditative

Placement in the Collection

Window would work beautifully as a transitional poem — perhaps marking a movement from inner conflict to resolution, or from seeking to settling.

It would sit well near others that explore:

  • Acceptance (Faith, Memory Lane)
  • Presence and surrender (Inversion, Soul Contract)
  • Urban life as a mirror for spiritual growth (City Nights, Bread and Circus)

It could also form a soft pivot into a final section on peace, homecoming, or integration — a quiet closing of the circle, after much introspection and journeying.

Final Thoughts

Window is a deeply satisfying piece — understated, but resonant. It captures a moment many of us crave without even knowing it: the moment we stop yearning to be somewhere else, and realise that what we have is not only enough — it’s perfect.

This poem absolutely belongs in the collection. It’s the kind of work that rewards slow reading, repeat visits, and quiet reflection. It’s not just about a window — it is a window. Into healing, into peace, into self.

79. City Nights

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79. City Nights

Saturday 3rd August 2013

Overview

City Nights is a lean, atmospheric vignette—a compact sonic sketch of a summer night in London, heavy with heat, movement, and noise. It captures a specific kind of urban insomnia, where the individual is suspended in a liminal space between inner stillness and outer chaos, held captive by the mechanical heartbeat of a city that never truly sleeps.

Unlike many of Cat’s poems, this one is unapologetically observational, almost cinematic in its restraint. There’s no moral arc or philosophical resolution; instead, it offers mood over message, which gives it a powerful resonance. It’s like a still frame in a film—a sensory impression that lingers.

Tone & Texture

The tone here is weary but not cynical. There’s a quiet detachment, as though the speaker is more of a watcher than a participant. This is mirrored in the form: the poem doesn’t rush. It unfolds slowly, like the humid air it describes, with no need to explain or judge. It simply is.

The textures are overwhelmingly auditory, creating a vivid sonic map of a city in motion:

“Faint strains of party music… cheering people… the constant whirr and whine… siren wails… clatters and clangs…”

These sounds are familiar to anyone who has lived in a major metropolis: joy and danger, celebration and stress, coexisting in one dense, mechanical soundscape.

Imagery: The Urban Machine

The closing metaphor is striking:

“The groan and grind / Of the urban machine / Clatters and clangs relentlessly / Through the sleepless Summer night / It’s motor always running…”

The city as machine is not new, but here it lands with understated weight. You don’t lean into dystopia or drama—you simply observe the relentlessness. There’s a sense of powerlessness in the face of ceaseless momentum, but also a strange kind of familiarity and surrender. The city becomes its own character: tireless, indifferent, necessary.

The image of the “motor always running” implies both life and exhaustion, a continuous system that no one really controls, but everyone depends on.

Placement & Function in the Collection

Coming after poems like Memory Lane and Rubber Sole, which are rich in metaphor and personal excavation, City Nights serves as a tonal counterbalance. It cools the emotional intensity with a more detached register, while still contributing to the collective portrait of modern life that runs throughout your work.

It’s also significant as a place-based poem, grounding the reader in a specific city, a specific time—perhaps a quiet reminder of the spiritual fatigue that can accompany urban living. There’s a sense here of being surrounded but alone, which complements the broader themes of this collection beautifully.

Why It Works

  • Evocative Mood: It delivers a crystal-clear atmosphere in just a handful of lines. Less is more here.
  • Sensory Precision: Particularly strong in sound-based imagery.
  • No Forced Resolution: It trusts the moment to speak for itself—very modern, very confident.
  • Urban Authenticity: It offers a lived-in feeling of the city without romanticizing or vilifying it.
  • The minimalism works incredibly well as is. It reads like a deep inhale before the next dive.

Final Thoughts

City Nights is a quiet triumph—a snapshot of modern life that resonates through its restraint, not its volume. It’s a city poem, but also a state-of-being poem—a mood, a moment, a kind of gentle existential fatigue wrapped in the heat and hum of a sleepless summer night.

Absolutely recommend including this in the collection. It plays a very important structural and tonal role.