HERE IT IS
Fill the spaces
between
your fingers
with the
pictures of
a swaying
candle-lit-lantern
hanging
like a
glowing
corpse
upon a
lonely
vessel
moving
upstream
in a
procession
of soft
songs that
you have
never
heard
before.
SHAPE SPILLING
I can sense it
like a
prowling
cat,
like a
shark,
like a
cruel
conman,
like a
hawk or
eagle,
snake or
crocodile,
ant
or spider:
that exact
moment
when it is
time to
strike –
hold the
pen
steady,
believe
and ink
will
spill into
the
shape of
poems.
ANOTHER
Day
saturated
with
time
taken
brutally
away,
but
memory
knows
temporarily
of this
day
as it does
with all
other
days,
weeks,
months,
years,
centuries
before me,
those
moments
will never
be
lost or
stolen
or loved
or
lived
again.
FIRST MORNING IN NEW JERSEY
Walking down a strange street
in New
Jersey: 7 a.m.: a wine
and brandy
hangover – I
continue
walking, stopping
to heave
and retch and vomit
every
couple of minutes: I
see a
bench, rest and smoke
a
cigarette and look up into
the skies and
clouds of the
USA: I
find a café and
order
coffee, toast and eggs
and eat
and after find my way
back to my
room: my
neighbors
are all strangers
and when I
cracked-open
a beer at
8 a.m. they
looked at
one- another
and
frowned but said
nothing as
I offered
them a
bottle of
morning
sunshine and
drank
deep.
ANOTHER DEATH WARRANT
Sometimes, it feels like
we’re all
on death-row,
no matter
how true and
convincing
your story –
you will
die:
now it
seems this Covid
horror has
issued
another
death warrant
for
mankind:
nowhere to
run or hide,
fear of
going out to
the shops
for food and
booze: we
all look
like
masked bank-
robbers:
another
silent enemy,
another
war
and right
now, who or
how the
fuck it
happened
doesn’t
matter:
globally
we can hold
hands over
this one.
A LONELY ALLEY
Death is always close by
but even
from an early age,
one could
sense it within
her: she
seemed to lack
everything
except
intelligence
and it would
prove to
be fatal:
she once
lived with an
asshole,
who I knew and
disliked:
he beat her
several
times before I
found out
and offered
to go beat
his ass but she
told me to
back-away,
that she
could take care
of herself
and she
knew that
was bullshit:
wanting an
end,
she was
alone,
it must
have been
agonizing
withdrawing
and
freezing
to death
in a
lonely alley,
juts a few
miles from
where I
write this.
John D Robinson
