Poem 329

Written in 1983 but I’m obviously thinking about my time as a semi civil servant which thankfully was a year behind me (though I’d exchanged one sort of invisibility for another by being on the dole) …

( I like the watery x-ray … we haven’t had a cat in a poem for a while – nice suggestion that this one’s only got one eye … )

Vanishing Man

I no longer say good morning
no one answers
I sit at my desk and dream
the sunlight is passing through me
making a watery x-ray
on the carpet

I slide through cracks far and wide
unnoticed
                     no one disturbs me
the rolls of dust in my drawers grow fat
at the end of the day
it's all the same to the bus driver
if he takes my money
                                            or not

as I pass
the old scabby cat
sitting by meat from the torn rubbish
does not even
                               open his eye