Ballad of Will Killingsworth

He used to hoard his poems in a plastic bag –

They were heavy but the burglars threw them on their

Backs with the rest of his life – fill the cracks in theirs

With more crack.

 

Later, he came home and found it

Gone and worse, his poems taken, and he knew that

Somewhere, soon, they would decompose in the stink

Of rotting  food.

 

Nothing was left, he had no insurance, he had

No chip that housed anything good he’d ever said

With dread the sink dripped and he thought how stupid

He had been to put his poems in a plastic bag that felt like money.

 

[To be continued]

Probably Armageddon

The last days before it

Ends or begins again,

When the lines in the

Globe crack trees

Through the gap

And silt oil into

Dust, no one

 Left to care

If the tap

 Runs cold.

Neanderthal Hero

 

An inlet four foot wide

Was made inside

A cave,

Dug out from coal

Black granite,

Hard as hail

Stones against slate tile.

 

For days he carved

And Hacked, blush

Sweat it dripped

Between the cracks

And creatures

Of the floor:

Dull bats dislocated

And snakes woken ,

Sensing strangers.

 

Soft down the road

Came she, to see

What he had done

Where hewn, the

Niche that he

Had made-

No spade or

Trowel, bare handed

He’d shovelled

Out the nook

For her to use,

A perch rescue

From the snakes

Bats and cracks

With whom they shared the cave.

 

[July 31^st 2009:]