poem
WRITTEN:
1983, 16 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This was a big experiment and it mostly failed. I was trying to capture something, but I think that other than the second line, whatever it was got away. But wait - hmmm, the last two lines are somewhat reminiscent of Rik, The People's Poet, wouldn't you say?
Linoleum tiles smother dead-coloured concrete;
Waiting tea bags century in flustered masses by the sink;
Tradesperson dents our door but no-one is home;
There is only the silence like the smell of a wet dog
Lingering like a wet dog; the death.
Janey spoke of tallets,
Flinging wild worlds of hope and religion,
Shrieking, demanding to believe in God.
(Lord, may not a cat eat fish?)
"He who knoweth us, let her deny them."
Janey, so dead, lingers as a shard of a plastic spoon
Which I trod on this morning.