Decorum is corrupt, decorum is dead, the books we told were good
have all been read.
Fitzgerald has been bled dry by institutions, teachers and those guys in
red chrome cardigans.
Those Pennine walks have turned to drunken talks in the eaves of the night,
high above conscious thought and the cold glow candle light
The long haul flights back to the heavenly sight of tyre black
tarmac have become tedious meditations;
though those lamentations still exist within my wrists,
a yearning for your riverside kiss.
Bus journeys along roads and routes I already knew are
changing without consultation,
it’s temporary probation, an experimentation, a test
of time well spent.
Time well spent in ground floor, high rent, properties,
fading away into a slack attitude disease.
Needles and fluid, *** and Cupid won’t lift you from this
perpetual stall,
nor will anything at all; though maybe plans scribbled down on
napkin edge corners will.
With thought, white paper vertices can quickly become
mountain range peaks.
Throw politeness out of your transport’s window
and become a widow to the road,
black veil eyes, cold and grainy, lost in your endeavour
to find somewhere new to feel safe and clever.
Take those books that you thought were good to tear
into the new prose of the year.
Rip title pages and dedication pages and index pages
from the spine
and throw them in the air
to make a new line of literature and pain.
Take also your pencils and strip them of
their back bone lead
and shave them into clean kindling for fire start
shavings for a warmer lonely camp bed.
It’s there and then, in your fake polyester,
four season sleeping bag womb
that’ll you’ll experience the darkened tomb
of unbound freedom.
But like paragraphs of small print found in the back of the squint-again-magazines,
freedom comes at a price, as if long hair and lice or poverty and bedroom escapade vice.
www.coffeeshoppoems.com