THE DIFFERENCE OF ONE LETTER

On this blank sheet,

torn from my bedside journal,

I could record

the unshared grievances

and missed embraces.

All the adventures unexplored.

 

And when that page was full

I would fold it –

again and again and again –

until it became a tiny tablet.

 

Then, as you looked away,

I might drop it

into your water and watch

its words dissolve, disperse,

filling your glass

like a love potion.     Or poison.

 

vii. 2024

WAKING WITH THE DUSTMEN

a birthday poem for TJS


Moonset, out there.

Already they are on their way.

Maybe women also wheelie back and forth

with bins to empty, and return.

Settled, foetal, you cling to the cardboard hem

of flat-pack dreams:

an unfilled mind riding the Alpha waves.

A slant of light squints through the louvres of your blind –

darkness begins to lift.

 

There is juddering outside.

You’ve seen that monster – lifting, tipping – eat before,

and turn deaf ears on it.

But all your time-torn wiles to win back sleep

are useless as a punctured tyre.

From under snugly covers, grudgingly

you pull yourself up, strand by strand;

realise that comic handstands are a skill

beyond your years.

 

iv. 2024