In my small neat room he made his choice
Sat
Clawing at his coat
Charity’s finest
The hand that made him the man he was

It found him bottles to live in,
Emptied his pockets
And with its twin had given its view on how it felt
About what others had just said.

Bleached eyes
Slipped away to somewhere else,
Some when else

Bleary focus
Was barely there
The nowhere stare began to water.
He smiled
Crooked
Resigned

The hand
Still for a while
Shook
Was it laughing?

Did it have its own grin
In mockery of him
Keeping the joke to itself
Had it read his mind
Did it whisper

“It would be easier to cut me off”.

The room slumbers
In soft candle light
A summer ghost haunts the corners
This end of August
I am lulled
Soon my eyes grow heavy
Surrender their focus
As I drift from what is known
Towards that world apart
There to dream myself
In the heart of something eternal

I first saw him telling tales outside a charity shop
To more than one
None of who would stop long enough
To hear the story
Filled with hard learned consequence
Brought on
By life’s hard knocks
It was only later
That he caught me
Emerging
As he did
From the well-used telephone box
Clinging to a rucksack
***** trousers just a bit too short
In this unexpected setting
He began to talk
Already the expectation
Of my dismissal
My retort
A truth
Or fabrication
Made up on the spot
Or several days before
Considering the question
His measure of my reaction
Every word apologetic
He knows I just won’t get it


This
The latest chapter
In a lifetime
The colour of every forgotten
Back street door

By now it’s all too late
The question’s out
And before we know it
We’ve reached the pause
I give him what is asked for
And he is
Forever thankful
Perhaps though
More for my time
Than for the legal tender
Given as it was
In an ready open handful

I tune in and out
To the faintest of signals
From station to forgotten station
In between
Listening for the whispers
That will lessen the buzz
The whistle of static in my head
The ever distant
Heartbeat of stars
The ever present
Voices of the dead

Somewhere, between familiar places,
He had somehow gotten lost
Beneath his feet,
Not the same day to day well-worn path
Instead, he found himself in an unknown wood
And when he tried thinking back to where he’d started from,
There was no recollection, no memory
Just
Soft sighing music
Going round and round inside his head

Somehow, he had been misled

Looking through the gloom, to find some bearing
A land mark or sign to shed some light
Only ended in confusion, to the point
Of him not even being sure which was his left or right
And the more he looked amongst the trees
The more he thought he saw
What might be faces
Bright eyes in the shadows
Just on the edge of normal sight


So, what to do, what choice should he make
Stand still, stay there
Backwards, forwards
Which unknown, uncertain way should be the one to take?

A half decision, quickly made

To go backwards somehow already felt too late
Forwards then, the ending of the path ahead known but to fate
So, on he walked, deeper in to the woods
But with him now, a nagging doubt
A feeling he’d been warned about being misled
And that someone had told him
Before he went through his door
He should turn his coat, inside out

He couldn't let the sleeping dog lie
***** of the past
Woken
Let lose once again under the moon
Now he only wants to follow
Run with her
Her sleekness
Making him forget her bite
Old marks from the tooth
And the claw
Better he spends the night with restlessness
Before she comes back
To whine beneath the window
And leave scratches on the door

Always a man to mean what he said
Handled his words like spades
Until something pulled them out of his hands
And then smacked him in the face
Always a man to pinpoint the truth
The thing he loved to do
Until the day it pinned him into a corner
And beat him black and blue
Never the man to hold a deceit
Until he burdened himself a secret
And despite how he cried
How he twisted inside
He knew
That he’d just have to keep it