Eye to Eye

There was so much
fuck and shit that night.

Two uni boys beside me,
telling ghetto voce stories,
laying out their manhood
on their widespread legs.

Two boys aboard a train:
one black, one white and I,
across a double decade
gulf, could only listen.

and then one says your people
man and then the other says
my people what you mean
you know one says your Indian

brothers. Then the other,
second generation
London stock with roots in
Pakistan, stared straight at me.

And I, looking past his
clothes and swagger, reached
across the gulf and met him,
understanding, eye to eye.