Poem 115

A poem that turned into a list, not for the first or last time – but I like the way you have to go all the way to the end to get what the list is actually listing, or indeed to finish the overarching sentence …

… this could be two people and only they know what might have been – or it might be wider, the ‘us’ big enough to encompass all of us?

( the stream of fish slapping on the concrete is meant to evoke the sound of serious overflow from your guttering in a downpour and drained like a sump making art in a puddle refers to rainbow patterns engine oil makes in water …  )

Love Lost

Catching us snarling at each other
across the room they say there was never
much love lost between them

wrong wrong wrong

leaping down gutters into drains
clutching bus tickets full of bullet holes
spouting off the roof like a stream of fish
slapping on the concrete
left in the library with the chewed-end pens
forgotten like an umbrella when the sun came out
drained like a sump
making art in a puddle
caught like a collarless dog
sold for scrap
mislaid in the mail
picked from a pocket at the races
left in a sack on the railway line
strayed loitered
mysteriously disappeared
transmuted like an African lake into wobbly air
into a pain on the eyes
leaking like warmth off the bottom of the earth
like dump trucks backed up to the chasm unloading
the vast amount of love lost
between us