You try to sleep
Insomnia
Like a woodpecker attacking the brain
Thoughts circling 25 storeys up
Sound of sex next door
Erotic?
No!
A gramophone needle stuck
With every thrust
Tennis player like grunts
Tongue out
Concentration
No doubt
Orgasms follow?
“Nobody gets out alive”
Bury one’s head in pillows
As shell bursts of yesterday’s mistakes
Explode overhead
Enough ‘fucks ups’ and regrets
To fill a mass grave
And cover with pine needles
Age gifts you memories you hoped
You drowned in the bath long ago
Flushed down the lav
Fuck did I really do that?
Say that?
Feel that…?
The “C” word hammered into my head
Just to let me know
I should have done better
Been a better person?
Did I kill anyone?
For a bottle or a fix
A drug deal & robbery gone wrong
I don’t remember
The mists of time
Solidify
Sleep in a cement mixer
With a bouquet of dead roses
And the file on remembering curls up
As flame takes hold
And ash blows away
A limping Psalm in the wind
Close your eyes and sleep will creep up
Maybe?
As the Hong Kong skyline is strung
With lights
As if my drunk father had tried to
hang them on Christmas Eve bottle
In hand
Trying to create a happy home
Four hours to day break
Before the Macao hydrofoil
Throttles across the Bay
And birds
Rattle the sky with serrated cries
And I gain one more day
Of amnesia and forgiveness
.
Malcolm Paul
.