January 2022

I walk in darkness along neon signs
Telling tall tales of lives in fast lanes,
Of hope as the glue that binds 
The sinners, the righteous few
Portrayed as pastoral winners. 

I walk in darkness along tree lines,
Ageing trunks recount in truth 
Their experiences of life
In the slow lane. 

I walk with darkness all around,
Contemplating grinding get-goings,
Our directionless dawdles where
Headlights show the way. 

I stand in darkness, refusing to take
Another step until I find directions
To my Atlantean, utopian home 
In the forest of old.

What’s in a name, I ask, well aware
Marks will be deducted with absent
Quotation glyphs: oh, the pain of 
Writing a life’s work in dialogue 
When no one will ever be bothered 
To read. Like a poem hidden 
Inside an ad for a rundown car: tax expired but likely to last for another
Hundred thousand miles 
Of continuous prose. I consider 
Blank verse but want at least one 
Rhyme to stretch across the bonnet,
Or boot – either will do. My name is
Uninspiring.

My own sorrow, the reflected echo
Of a rusty spade beside the hole 
I kept digging, never called forth 
The rain; never left any hope of ever
Finding a door, an escape out into
The world of normal, into your world
Where A follows B and the light
Only comes on when buttons
Are pressed; dangling from above 
The hole is not a hole, I could not
Call the spade a spade, the light 
Is off and there are no buttons 
To press, the whole alphabet 
Is merrily dancing around a tree 
Except A follows E, and there are
No tears to shed.

A thin slice of life 
Covered in whipped cream,
A silver spoon searching 
For sponge finds only cream,
Cream,
Strawberry jam, 
And hard-whipped
Cream. 

A thin slice of life
Whitewashed as the walls,
Right hands reaching for bread
To dip and divide among the dead. 

A thin slice of life
Partitioned.

Lives – severely severed.

Intemperate the soul that walks 
Your skin along meridians blocked,
Along the remnants of a stagnant
Life once lived;
Eager the infant child to walk anew
The same paths unforgotten;
Intemperate the souls that roam
The eternal roads, in search of 
Other victims, of other beasts
To tame;
Eager infant children walk anew
The dusty roads never ending.