Kindling (a poem)

Kindling

It is hard to light a fire,

when there is no air to blow it out,

no wood to smother it over,

no water to douse its light.

They say the grass always look greener,

but here, standing on the edge of my own patch of land,

all I see is forest fires.

Too many candles,

in too many hands;

they blur together,

growing, spontaneous constellations,

and I, with only my kindling and flint,

do not know how to navigate nebulae

without getting burned.

I light a campfire, at the very border of my shores,

a lighthouse beacon in a sea of lighthouse light,

hoping that its dim yellows will stand out against the brightness,

will burn dull and small and orange enough –

no glimmer of gold –

that maybe other boats can find

my shipwreck,

the way that fire spreads:

catching alight,

taking to flame,

setting ablaze.

How delicate the verbs of our quiet ignition –

like laying a table –

softly spoken licks and clicks of the tongue,

a murmur around a campfire,

where you and I can sit

and talk a while

and warm each other’s stutters in the too bright dark.

So before you have to cross once more

into that forest fire,

candled sea,

let me catch your voice in bonfire.

Sit and kindle me.

Like the fingers in a magic trick,

white-gloved careful fingertips,

catching fireflies,

so easily.

Ancient Avenue (a poem) - [2012]

Ancient Avenue

See the gnarled and twisted fingers
stretching out from outstretched hands –
reaching across the canopy –
bewringed with wooden wedding bands.


Inspired by a very beautiful part of Southampton that I passed each day to and from Avenue campus. Have been re-reading some early medieval poetry from my university studies there, and I rediscovered my favourite anonymous poem, Westron Wynde. I admire its brevity, its emotion, and how it speaks as clearly now as it did in its own era. I cannot claim to have achieved the same, but the length is about right!     

Sapphireless (a poem) - [2012]

Sapphireless

They say her eyes are blue as precious stones,

though in her eyes I see no sapphires set;

for sapphires have a beauty of their own,

but that is not the beauty I have met.

Or else they say her eyes are blue like pools,

drowning sailors in their crystal depths;

but it would be a folly to be fooled,

for ocean’s blue is just what it reflects. 

It is only when I look with half-closed eye,

and see her lying there, just out of sight –

touching but untouching as we lie –

that I can see her colour, clear and bright.

And all along I guess I always knew

how best I could describe her eyes: so blue. 

Dream Catcher (a poem) - [2015]

Dream Catcher

She’ll catch them when they close their eyes,

and, blinking, lead them through the dusk:

those lonely, drifting, lid-eyed folk,

whom consciousness has left to rust.

She takes their hands that, idle-resting,

cling to inkless pens and hope –

draws them with her finger’s curling,

guides them down her turning slope.

Obedient, the dreamers follow,

loping after sound and smell:

the fragrance of her wild perfume,

the clamour of her ankle bell.

She leads them to her pool of shadows,

spilling from a waiting chamber –

lets the pitch devour her prey,

licks her lips and senses danger.

But nothing. Not the stench of burning,

gag of sulphur, choke of coal;

not an inch of crawling flesh

beneath her threadless camisole.

With quarry held in lapping shadows,

she lets warm breath abrade her skin,

steers them to her open portal,

draws them close and pulls them in.

It’s dark. They know and yet unknowing

still they find her yew-carved seat.

There she utters breathless whispers,

daring to be first to speak.

“Eat,” she says, and puts her fingers

to their lips to make them feed:

cold, crisp grapes and bitter olives,

wine and pomegranate seeds.

Clumsily they stand to meet her,

trembling to touch her lips,

leaning close to smell her neck,

to hear her breath, to stroke her hips.

But her angles cut like sharpened stones,

cadaverous – imperial –

with incense buried in her scent,

putrescent and funereal.

She binds her prey with lips like velvet,

tight around their humming throats –

weaving down their chests and shoulders,

tracing lines and rites and rotes.

Then down their arms and round their wrists

her lips go brushing, feather-light,

round and round her jet-black lovers,

shadow-stripped and bound by night.

With spindle fingers on their cheeks,

she guides them on, her dreaming dead –

until they topple down together

to lie upon her master’s bed.

There they’ll sleep in knotted chains,

committed to their tomb of bones:

her body fractured, ossified,

her lips like alabaster stones.

By dawn she knows her prey will leave her,

banished by the blinking sun,

leaving her to sleep alone

in sheets of cold obsidian.    

They’ll see her through half-waking eyes,

and, blinking, glimpse her in the light:

that lonely, drifting, lid-eyed girl,

who catches dreamers in the night.

The day the teachers left (a poem) - [2016]

The day the teachers left

The day the teachers left, the schools stood still.

They hadn’t gone on strike and they didn’t go home ill;

they just left – disappeared –

not a note and not a word,

and before the parents could call in and say it was absurd,

they all were gone,

by the blinking of their clocks and the rising of the sun,

every teacher, tutor, lecturer, professor – every one

had vanished – and left the world to manage

with eleven million children,

from Dorchester to Stanage,

needing somewhere to go and somebody to teach them.

The government officials stood looking each to each.

Then they packed them all in meeting halls and local parish spaces,

(the oldest fiddling on their phones,

the youngest with their laces).

They tried to find a video to occupy the time,

stalling just enough to work out what on earth had gone awry,

and what to do,

but whatever film they’d choose,

the kids would sing cacophony in gripes and groans and boos.

They didn’t want to watch another adaptation of Macbeth,

and that wildlife documentary would bore them half to death,

so even though it’s never acceptable to watch Frozen in June,

all pretence of education was lost by afternoon.

The children celebrated, rejoiced in whoops and cheers,

while headteachers delegated to remaining staff through tears,

and the parents rang demanding what the hell was going on

and who would provide their childcare if the teachers had all gone.

The media, of course, spun headlines through the day,

asking “how many weeks off do teachers get for holidays?”

Through all of this, the classrooms stood, stiller than the halls,

with carpets stained and chairs untucked, displays still on the walls -

a sorry sight - with projectors left on overnight,

and books abandoned on shelves, unread,

not even misunderstood,

dictionaries and Dickens, and all the other texts they should

have read if they weren’t

- as the children say -

completely dead.

Soon the kids grew restless;

they didn’t need to stay,

as the keepers of the classrooms no longer blocked their way,

so despite cries of ‘Don’t you dare!’

and an odd ‘Detention!’ in the air,

the children simply did not care,

and they left too that day.

Because children want to be children,

so it probably makes sense,

that if you force them to be adults, they’ll be animals instead;

and if you try to tell a child to not be childish -

it’s probably on you if you don’t get what you wish.

So the kids got rid of all that they were taught:

the criteria and the exam timings and the termly school reports.

They walked out bleary eyed beneath a sun that burned their skin,

not one of them prepared,

not one knowing a thing.

And for a while it seemed like that was how the world would end,

with children filling parks and playing football with their friends -

not a C grade between them,

but grinning ear to ear -

and every twenty-something longing to join them there.

But the world didn’t end,

and it wasn’t long until

the kids began to wander back,

and even stranger still,

they turned up at the galleries,

the gardens and museums;

they drifted into libraries,

and theatres; you could see them

haunting the old schoolgrounds,

peering through the gates,

lingering on campuses,

alone,

then with their mates,

to sheepishly inquire to any who could hear:

‘I have, like, a question - I don’t wanna, like, learn or nothing,

but it would be cool if someone here could, like,

explain maybe?

Like, I tried googling it, but, I dunno,

I still don’t quite get how to work it out,

like how to solve for x, I guess,

or what spreadsheets are about,

and, like, how do I start a business?

And where did the stars come from?  

And I still don’t get why Boo Radley just doesn’t leave his home?

So, like, if anyone could help me - that would be pretty cool.’

But nobody could answer;

there was no one left at school.

It was years before they found out where the teachers really were,

while exam dates came and went, in a bleak, ungraded blur.

On a far out tropical island,

speckless in the sea:

a tiny teachtopia – where they lay along the beach,

with a  book in one hand, and a drink in the other,

the full-timers and part-timers, the substitutes and covers.

They had built a university from palm trees and stone;

they held lectures for each other and debates beneath the sun.

The painters studied physics; the mathematicians wrote poetry,

and when the helicopter landed with the agent from the Ministry

of Teacher Retrieval,

they offered him a glass,

and invited him to join the talk on Medieval dance.

But he declined, fixed his tie,

demanded to speak to whomever was in charge.

An older woman approached with a reassuring smile,

and she asked if she could talk with him in private for a while.

‘Don’t worry, dear. You’re not in trouble,’ she said,

but he struggled still to meet her eyes and hung his thinning head.

‘I’m here to bring you all back,’ he began.

‘You’ve made your point and we think it’s time you fixed what you’ve done.

The children have run riot; they’re learning on their own;

and how are we supposed to measure it? The employers don’t know

who to employ. There’s no data to compare!  

We need you to come home; there are thousands of papers there.

The education secretary, she understands your dissent,

so she’s willing to raise your salaries by a generous one percent.’

The older woman smiled;

she placed a wrinkled, sun-tanned hand

on his arm, and said,

‘It’s not you we’re disappointed in; it’s your behaviour, you understand.’

She poured him a martini,

and walked him down the beach.

‘Once you’ve learned your lesson,

we’ll come back to teach.’

The Divided Kingdom - in response to the EU referendum

Today the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. Or rather, I should say ‘half’ of the people of the United Kingdom, for what shook me the most about the result today was how close it was.
          51.9% to 48.1%. These figures stand to symbolise the disunity of a population and the distance between generations. Is it not alarming that we can be so divided? Disconcerting that we can claim a democratic majority with a 3.8% difference? I would be arguing the same if the results had been the opposite. For in short: this is a divided kingdom, and what is worse, by making the decision to leave, we have defined ourselves by this division.
          I have felt the rise in paranoia. I have seen stances grow more extreme. I have heard the voices of children in my classroom parroting the prejudices of their parents, parroting the persuasion of politicians. And now, staring at that blue and yellow arch on the BBC News homepage, I see the first step on a bleak journey. The UK has made a choice. It does not want intelligent argument, thoughtfulness, research or fact. It is fear we want, emotion, rhetoric, even a bare-faced lie if it can get a reaction or one more vote. Not even the repugnant political personalities of Farage and Gove are enough to give second-thought to that heady mix of sensationalism and easy apathy that drives UK politics. Half of the voting population have elected a change that is still yet to be clearly explained or justified. What was the point again? Immigration? Economy? Freedom of … what exactly? Gove was right; we’ve had enough of experts. We just want to know who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s left and who’s right, who’s red and who’s blue, who’s black and who’s white. We want easy answers and to know whose side we’re on. But when we define ourselves down party lines, class divides and generation gaps, we can never be a united kingdom, no matter how proudly we assert it.
          Today I have looked in the faces of twenty-somethings and teenagers in tears, not because they are sad or angry or even disappointed, but because they are scared. They are scared of an uncertain future that is not in their hands, of opportunities closed to them; and more than anything, of how much their parents could betray them, putting their present fears over the next generation’s future worries. In a poll conducted by my school’s sixth form (largely made up of students merely months too young to be entitled to vote), 92% said they would vote to remain. So where are those frightened voices now?
          Lost in the chasm of that 3.8%.

          Blame too must perhaps be given to those 27.8% who did not vote. Who naively believed that the British people could not be so foolish, so misled, or so frightened to actually make this decision. Who had such blind faith in common sense that they did not feel the need to raise a voice for the common causes of reason and factual truth. But let this be the lesson learned: that rational, quiet voices can no longer tread water in the vitriolic sea of louder, deceitful ones – that sometimes, when sense is drowning, we must declare what is obvious to keep ourselves afloat.
          Before today, I had never seriously considered living anywhere but England. I had continued blithely in the belief that, for all its flaws, the UK was going to be alright. Indeed, the one redeeming quality of this ‘Great’ Britain was that it seemed to have enough humility in its present, and enough shame of its past, to get on quietly in one piece. But now I am not so sure.
          We have become arrogant and proud. I don’t want to live in a country divided down its middle, a nation no longer united, whose predominant message to the world is: “We don’t want you!” Because we can all hear that message, and one-by-one, we will all be turned away. We will turn away our professionals and our students, for we cannot promise a better life or education; we will turn away our artisans and academics, for there is no value in art or science here; and then we will turn away each other, as each of us who once voted to remain will vote to leave.
          What a sad little island will be left behind, trapped so close to the borders of the world, but with its doors shut, its windows barred, its fingers in its ears.
          I could be wrong. I cannot know. Impacts will barely be felt at first. But I still fear the route we are taking, the lines we are drawing, the future we are building. I want so badly to be wrong. But it is hard to be wrong in a country that has decided that it is so right.

The Hole in My Door (a poem) - [2010]

The Hole in My Door

There's a hole in my door, a hole in the wood.
It lets in a draft, as any hole should.
It isn't a crack, or a fracture, or tear,
and I do not know how or why it is there.
  
There's a hole in my door, the size of a coin.
I should know; I've measured it time after time –
each morning, using an old copper piece,
to see if it's grown even the least.

But the hole in my door has never once changed:

a penny-sized 'O', forever the same,
and perfectly framed by the frame of my door –
dead in the centre – I've measured of course.

There's a hole in my door, which I stare at, at night,
when the curtains are closed and they turn out the light;
but the light in the hallway finds its way through.
Through the hole in my door, it enters the room.

There's a hole in my door that lets in the light.
I sit up and stare when I'm in bed at night,
holding my covers tight up to my eyes,
staring out over them, waiting to hide.

The hole in my door is enough for an eye,
to peek through and see me, to sit there and spy.
I see the light flicker and cover my head
and shut my eyes tightly and freeze in my bed.

There's a hole in my door, at which I still stare,
though my eyes may be closed and the covers still there.
‘Til, bravely, I dare to look then once more
and stare at the light through the hole in my door.

And the light will continue to flicker until,
tired with hiding and staring, I will
lay myself down, forgetting the eye,
to dreamlessly sleep in the flickering light.

There's a hole in my door, but they've seen it too,
easy to fix with some wood and some glue.
They measure the hole, the size of a penny –
perfectly round – how very uncanny.

So the hole in my door now lets in no light,
and now there's no hole to stare at, at night.
I hold myself tighter, and hide even more.
Now no one can watch through the hole in my door.

Lumina (a poem) - [2015]

Lumina – a nonsense love poem

He loves her more than stars love silk,

or winters love the moon;

her heart – his eye – a crystal sphere,

beneath her tidal swoon.

He catches moondrift in his gaze

and settles stars to seen,

and when she leaves his sorry side,

his shadows start to gleam.

How radiant her face, so bright,

though dimmed in evening air:

the veiling breath of merriwind,

the flowers of the fair.

How sweet, how soft, how cruel, how lost –

the dancing of her whirl,

the carouselling of her cheek,

her sunset dying pearl.

He looks with longing, aching heart,

to see her face again,

but when he searches for his love,

she leaves him with the feign.

Cruel courtier – shadow girl –

spinner bound by night,

his glass will catch you in its stars

and glimmer candlelight.

Dear Lumina, you break my heart

when I must see you go.

I long for golden autumn when

my darling’s heart may glow.

Thank you for the butterflies (a poem) - [2016]

Thank you for the butterflies

Thank you for the butterflies you give me –

trapped in the glass jam jar of my stomach,

my walls still sticky and sweet

no matter how many times I rinse myself through.

Thank you for the butterflies

that flutter inside my skin, tickling

with long wings. Their legs stroking and scratching

the thin fabric of my lid. Their proboscis tongues clinging
to my sugary sides.

(That’s how they like it, you said

 – sickly sharp and red – like one too many berries

on a Sunday afternoon,

or one too many spoonfuls of raspberry ripple.)

I poke holes in my belly to let them breathe;

I don't want them to die in me;
but at night,

when they keep me awake with their hummingbird beat,

sometimes
I just want to squeeze my stomach shut,

fill myself with acid and salt,

crush their folded bodies into a thin preserve

and squash them out.  

They unravel my intestines,

leaving me moth-holed
and cocooned,

not knowing how I will emerge

in the morning –

or what I should say if I do,

But thank you, anyway, for the butterflies you give me –

fluttering inside my skin –

their legs so sticky – so sweet.

The Whisperer (a poem) - [2013]

The Whisperer

He wandered from the whispering dusk,
his back turned to its orange hum, and
stammered across the fractured wastes
with his eyes set forward - 
heavy, dull.

An outcast,
he burbled over rocks and rifts
that cracked the dirt path etched ahead;
and muttering,
the whisperer fled.

Dressed Up As Life (a poem) - [2012]

In my final year at university, I joined SUPS, the poetry society with whom I spent a shamefully small amount of time before graduation. Had I known about them earlier (or moreover had the courage to join sooner), I think I would have a lot more to show for my creative output that year. In many small ways - and a few larger ones - being able to sit once-a-week in a room with people sharing poems they liked or disliked or couldn't make up their minds about was probably the best thing I ever did at university. A little simple, a little sad perhaps (through some lenses), but I hope to find a similar community in the future - if only to kindle the buttfire that keeps me writing.

This poem was written in response to one of the society's weekly prompts, which was the following photograph by Richard Avedon as part of his 'Death and the Maiden' series:     

Dressed Up As Life

I.

“So, how do I look?” she asks,

and she flashes herself a smile.

“With your eyes, I’d expect,” he desponds after a while.

“Now none of that,” she snaps. “I’ve had enough of your lip.”

“I don’t have lips,” he mumbles, (and he thinks maybe he should flip

her the bird every time she looks away,

but then he’d drop the mirror, and it would shatter, and anyway,

she never looks anywhere but in that pane of glass –

that pain in the arse – if he had an arse – that he’d carried long past

its welcome, in his thin, unshaking grasp.)

His bones itch. He says so.

“My bones itch!” he groans.

“Bones don’t itch,” she replies, in condescending tones,

“and anyway, you look handsome, so just ... stand there! Keep it still!”

And he’ll stand there, looking handsome, in his itchy suit, until

she stops her admiring – whenever that will be –

and settles on retiring – at which point he’ll be free.

“Just kill me now.”

“Uh! Men!” she sighs.

“I’m not a man,” he replies. “I used to be, but—”

He stops and waves a hand between his thighs.

“Hold still!” she snaps. “Or I’ll get it all wrong.”

And she cries out in frustration as she drops a sparkling thong.

“Have I got nothing to wear?! Where are all my clothes?!”

“You’re wearing them,” he mutters. “They’re right beneath your nose.” 

And as she stands there naked, he fiddles with his clothes.

“I used to have a nose ... I used to have a nose.”

II.

She tries another outfit, flashing each a smile.

And he stands there, feeling itchy, as she takes another while.

He watches as she dresses and undresses from her dresses,

and regales the finer details of messing up one’s tresses

for that windswept look, which is “absolutely necessary,”

she says. “It’s what the young people wear this time of year.”

“You could always go outside,” he says, but the words escape her ear.

Though for a while her flashing smiles are fewer in the mirror.

She administers her poison with a knife that points with poise

onto her cheeks and her throat,

and bleeds a hinting, blushing rose

of red, “a little colour,” or so she always said,

“or else one runs the risk of looking all-together dead!”

He eyes the alabaster skin she took out on a loan,

stretching all too thin across her thin and pallid bones,

eyes her with his sockets, those empty holes he owns,  

knowing that she’s dying, and knowing that she knows.

And for all the wordless words that might escape his tongueless tongue,

she chokes herself with powder to fill her powdered lungs.

“How much longer—,” he wonders, “How much longer ‘til she’s done?”

III.

She stops.

It’s raining again.

She can see it on the glass.

It’s dribbling down her eyes. 

There to linger, not to last.

A melancholy dripping

In the crimson hourglass.

But this time it’s a downpour.

This time it might last.

“How do I look?” she whispers,

and she flashes him a smile.

“Like one of us,” he whispers back, and he stays there for a while,

just watching her through sockets, forgetting how to smile,

before his fingers come away and strike the bathroom tiles.

She steps out of the mirror. She holds her scarlet knife.

Dressed up as the living.

Dressing up as life.

Unnatural (a poem) - [2009]

Unnatural

I perch here on this blackened branch,

the ashen limb,
where lightning struck and split apart
the bark and branded it black death.

Perhaps I shall make a nest here for my young.

Beneath the outstretched fingers of this
decaying bough,
lies a corpse, its eyes wide open,
all hope and vacant, clear, white canvas.

They have already picked the fear from them.

I could pick the bones, leaving
only memories
and the bullet still lodged in its skull.
It is only natural after all.

But I cannot feed the bullet to my young.

Toy Boat (a poem) - [2016]

Toy Boat

A toy boat drifted down the stream –

an empty sailing ship.

It crashed upon the river’s edge

and bobbed its head a dip.

Its sails were thumb-stained fabric,

and the wood was MDF,

and it tilted proudly to the sky,

emblazoned ‘Mary Beth’.

I pulled it from the riverbank;

it dripped its waters free;

then I set it down again

so it could carry on to sea.

Pin (a poem) - [2015]

Pin

When his heart broke, it        ruptured,

    fissured,

                  and                                    burst:

ricocheting              shrapnel               to           carve        out        his          chest

His shredded lungs

                                                                                                hung link scraps of

popped

balloons

His ribs stayed,

claw-scratched,

scarred bars of bone,

across a gaping cavity.

A chunk of heart rose and                          lodged                                   in his throat.

He choked.

Dark fluid pooled in the cavern of his gut –

a crater

– overflowing

 – spilling

– staining him

He had always had a grenade

where a heart should be,

and when she kissed him goodbye,

it hurt like pulling

                                                                                               – the pin

There Are No Monsters Here (a poem) - [2015]

There Are No Monsters Here

“He has no eyes, they say!” he said. “And two great, hulking arms!

He has six horns that crown his head and fourteen clawing hands!”

“Rubbish!” cried an older man, casting a glower and glare.

“I’ve lived in these mountains all my life, and there are no monsters here.”

“But I saw him through the trees of glass!” the drunkard cried in turn.

“The beastie had black fur like night, and scaled skin like a wyrm!”

“Preposterous!” the old man croaked. “Your eyes deceive your sense.

Such visions are deceiving dreams, from bottles conjured hence!

Besides,” the ancient carried on, “if there were such a thing,

we’d all be dead – as said is said – and my heart is still beating.”

At this the drunkard raised his head and leased a terrible roar,

then monstrously – to disbelief – poured the old man in his maw.

The Sea Departed (a poem) - [2015]

The Sea Departed

When the sea departed, no one saw;

it drifted off to sleep –

picking up its waters and packing up its reefs.

The night was hot and grumbling;

the Earth was still and groaned,

but the sea slung on it coral-sack and bore off on its own.

The rivers joined it in its wake,

the reservoirs and streams,

‘til every lake and every pool had given up its means.

Then swashing up to atmosphere

and ebbing toward the stars

the sea released its whirlpool arms and drifted off to Mars.

On Earth, there was never a drip

nor drop to stir or save.

The seas had given up the dirt and left without a wave.

We wondered at our desert world,

and why the seas were gone –

we blamed each other for the loss – then blamed it on the sun. 

I Shouldn't Be Here (a poem)

A colleague at my school recently organised a fantastic poetry workshop for our Year 12 students. We had a guest speaker to lecture about the history of the NHS and the main issues surrounding the junior doctors' strikes this week. I not only got to deliver my own workshop session: 'Writing a poem is writing a person - large structures in poetry.' (super pretentious, I know!), but I stole the opportunity to do some writing for myself, which I haven't done properly or published in years. Consequently, in a thief's twenty minutes of lunch time, when I should have been sending emails, picking at another exam paper, and printing resources, I wrote the following piece to perform period nine.


I Shouldn't Be Here

Mrs Gerwich from the home has a wonky hip;

Esther Murray’s caught god-knows-what from the new girl at the local primary;

and Mr Fanovitch …

Mr Fanovitch has that thing on his toe that we won’t talk about.

In short – I have people to see.

But I’ve just come from a curtained room after a bit of bad news:

(Given.

It felt like received.)

with the blood from that poor lass on the motorbike

– off the motorbike –

still on my gloves.

I shouldn’t be here,

but I keep looking at that bloody hand, and it won’t stop

shaking.

I need a cup of tea.

As I reach for that shrivelled bag of leaves

the newspaper headlines glare up at me

from under a mug of black coffee –

half-touched – still warm –

whispering ugly plumes of heat:

“Junior doctors set to strike.”

How disgraceful. What shame.

And how much do they earn anyway?

The daily papercut chips away and my hands are

sore and

red and

stained.

Drip drip.

With a donor’s card in my back pocket:

what more can I give?

I feel – drained.

Paper thin.

Not much left in these veins.

But how dare I complain?

Saving lives!

Day after day.

Heroic! Defiant

in the face of every malady.

How can I put a price on that kind of salary?

Who wouldn’t give … everything?

But there’s not much more I can give.

And I clench my fist, trying to keep the blood

flowing,

but this was always a losing battle:

a war against death, in spite of war;

a war against disease, in spite of the strain

in my throat

and the clench

of my chest

– a tight, meaty fist –

beat – beat –

and all the rest.

But what do I know?

Some jumped-up twenty-something,

ungrateful, complaining,

again.

There’s a question in my brain,

tumour-like and growing,

and it comes without a question mark,

though I still hang from that curve and dot –

damn spot

I shouldn’t be here.