Monday, May 26, 2014

Sky of Bone, Land of Stone

I can’t write another poem.
That’s what I think sometimes
I’ve nothing more to write
Just another poem for another place
Another fizzing morning
After a noisy night

Alone in Edinburgh
In a hotel with Perspex walls
A drizzle of rain
After the hot southern cocktail
Sky of bone
Land of stone

I wander the streets
By chance I glimpse a lap dancer
Through through the open doorway
To an empty bar
She sticks out her tongue
In, what I imagined afterwards
As I walked the half-familiar streets,
A come-hither gesture
Using reverse psychology.

Sky of bone,
Land of stone.

Do you know what I fancy right now?
A cigarette. A roll up.
If I were on my own
And didn’t have a loving wife
Three hundred miles away
I could do that so easily
Embrace the deathly cocktail
of chemicals and carcinogens
drawn them into my lungs

My friend and I
We’d would walk out into the night, together
Beneath the bone sky
Into the land of stone
Into the dancer’s arms

My friend would glow
With the warmth of human contact
And the glow would finally die
And the wind would obliterate all traces
Of his soul, his dying breath
And I would toss his empty carcass
Into the road
And only his shadow would remain with me
In the land of stone


And then I’d want another friend

2 comments:

Russell CJ Duffy said...

So sad, melancholic but hauntingly beautiful too.

Sue hardy-Dawson said...

You know I forgot to look here for so long. Thank you for reminding me x