BuyGones

It was supposed to be a bedroom

But being too small for habitation,

Instead we used it for the storage

Of old things like toys and memories,

Just unwanted fragments of ourselves

That might have been useful once.

As you look around, my unstable thoughts

Like a drunken conversation overheard

Gloss over the blank page void

Of the whites of your eyes,

Because you don’t want to be told

What I need you to know.

Background Noise

A sick, stray dog cowers by a bin

pressing itself to the ground and trying

to convince the world that it doesn’t exist,

as nearby a man spreading grit on a road

wonders out loud not where his life has gone

but why it was never there to begin with.

Kids who have nothing better to do

practice freeze frame parkour on a bench and

chat about what they will not do tomorrow

because not even they have the time or money,

whilst the dog licks its gammy back legs

and hides itself in a corner to wait.

Women debate the finer points of kettling

as police officers close in around them,

their actions don’t threaten, they promise;

but to the dog it is all the same

as it catches the scent of something

that is yet shouldn’t be there.

Capital Obligation

It is hard to sleep

when you hate your dreams,

and harder still to wake up

when you fear your life

not flashing before your eyes

or blazing with glory,

but as just the day-to-day

ebbing away of things.

Soliloquy

It is now that welcome hour when daylight turns to darkness

Whereby substantiated dignity we spurn our yoke and harness;

No flame is fierce enough to forge that which we have wrought

Or likewise to deter us from the deliverance of our thoughts.

All fell machinations and dearly purchased instruments of state

Follow old designs that our present sires have failed to replicate,

And by wielding tools of private madness for the public good

They proceed to create tyrants where once only servants stood.

So, when all across this sceptred isle our peaceful protestations

Are met with nothing but thuggery and official obfuscation,

What course remains for those of us who worship reason

Than to contemplate acts of such dark and dire treason?

None that would serve to quench our sense of outraged wonder

At why we are beholden to those who live for non-existent plunder,

For no one knows wealth’s true value better than those who assign it

Yet when sacrifice is necessary they would look to us to define it.

Initial hints of our disobedience provoked the full force of the law

Without anyone checking the consequences of doing that before,

But we will let them mock us for our actions or wearing hoods

And they will not sneer so politely when our words turn to blood.   

Nameless

There goes that hour again...

It’s exactly the same as the last

And will be identical to the next.

If time flies here it does so in circles

Or rather it ever decreases in spirals

That take your life with them as you stand

With your wrists submerged in water

Trying to figure out exactly how

You ended up washing dishes for a living.