Poem 446

Little betrayals lead to larger ones, grow like triffids and cannot be put back in the box, instead spread out like a virus into the world …

( I like the rhymes of thought/caught bed/fed, the image of betrayal as propagating from a thought then as small an action as catching a glance, the backyard broken crockery as an image of relationship destruction – and the sense of both sex and sex-as-a-drug that permeates the poem … )

Betrayal

I have betrayal here in a matchbox
yes
         it is smaller than an insect
tiny as a thought
sudden as an eye caught
a beautiful lily
drug asprawl in the centre of the bed
plant it out
                      with your other spring bulbs
and misdemeanours
it shouts all night to be fed
from the backyard broken crockery
of other people's lives
it rolls free
                      of the incinerator
sprouts up waving strange organs
over the fence
at the neighbours