Sleep

Cycles up hill
Coasts down
Glutton for dips.
Ink; like water,
Flows best
With gravity.
I cry
When I wake

Because I wake
Failed again.
Failed.

All Around

Walking
Round this town
Seeing those people

Poems waiting
These buildings
Places old
New
Poems
Waiting
This shop
Full of poems
Waiting for ink
Its dusty edged window
A stanza at least
And cobbled streets
Paved paths
Flagstone square
Tarmac road
Poems all
And staring up
Up at those clouds
Clouds of poetry
As I turn
And walk home
Not a word will be written

Cash Only

They dance
Dance for money
Under pale orange glow
Old dancers and young
Bopping and jiving for cash
Those slim and those stout
Dancers performing an ageless ballet
Furtive steps here
Frantic twirls there
Dancers
Dancing for money
Dancing
That timeless dance

Opposites

So cold your heart
You make me burn
And switch attack half
Way through
Off on a different tangent
A verbal attention deficit
No discussion complete
No solutions in these storms of ours
As you stare past me
And tweak your hair
And claim you did it all for me
I’ll melt you think
As I have
Before
Before
Before
Oh yes, I forgot
Untimely death
I’m still warm
Still full of life’s heat
Living fire, burning me up
But I see you there
Cooling
Chilling
Filled with icy death

Sorry

Bigot

How I loath you
Mindless masses
I despair of you
Self centred thoughtless existence
Thinking of others only for self
Never willing to alter
Never wanting to evolve
Mud men clogging life’s paths
Staining the fibres of moral folk
Dragging it all down to your level
Mechanical outrages for hollow causes
Salt of the earth – we know what salt does
When sprinkled on fields – it poisons.
Subculture sub-cultural, uncouth.
Mindless masses
How I loath you.

...

I’m running a bath,
Or is that bath running me…
Just who is in control?

Loss

Leaden feet on wet sand
Drag me on
I know not why
Without you
There is no life
Worth living
Yet ‘cross wet sand
Leaden feet drag me on

Commitment

I remember so well
That morning
When you found me
After that night I’d spent
Ripping out my teeth
And how you calmed me

wiped blood and tears away
Then found each and every one
Washed and set them lovingly back
Such kindness and love
I remember so well
And how
That afternoon
You signed those papers
For I’ve never had teeth to pull…

Food I

I saw it there
On the edge
The cusp
And knew
Just knew
If I didn’t
Then
No-one else would
So
I went for it
Steeled my cast iron gut
And fried up
That
Recently out of date
Bacon…

Food II

Laid out
Side by side
That final two
Cold cold metal
Beneath
Warm yet harsh
Spotlights above
Long moments pass
And then
Motion
Rising
Floating
Dropping swoop
Towards a lighted room
Onto chromed steel rack
Door slams
Flames leap
From concealed burner
Temperature
Rising, rising, rising

Skin crisping

Internal fluids bubbling

Leaking...

Stale strawberry donuts, oven warmed
With custard…