Unforgivable’s Crossing

it is or was a now it
was or is this

             last

             winter as a Christmas

constructed its glistering
selves on house-shapes

and the votes of
ivy stayed stuck

             to their vines

❧

I walk out from the
fields and in

to the

city and just
as I cross that

             city’s just-

here-but-not-there my
shame follows

me closely like a faint wri
ggling dark puddle

             it is twice

-light the light
twice dim but I’m

certain people in these
streets will see

             the stain on my sleeve and down

             my trouser leg

             I was

             walking across not

that-long-ago-cultivated
ground the mud hungry

for my treading and there
he was the

baby the big
baby of a man mad here

             in an

English Midlands mud
land Donald Trump a

             lone and palely loitering with

             me his

             predator approaching

             something

went from
me like a

             star    tled partridge a

clatter of directions and the cold
cob    ble I’d palmed as I

             saw the problem was

             suddenly cracking a

             sk

                          ull

             Donald lay dead at my
             fee    t in the mud the

             grin strapped to his

             head said

             I

                          win you

                                                                 f

                                                                 uck

Mark Goodwin
Picture: Rupert Loydell

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