Been living on cans and that garbage food
Late night out back behind that convenience store
Thin pickings but they’re in separate bags
Donuts and pizza ain’t that bad
Park bench or playground slide bed in the summer
All night coffee at twenty four hour restaurant
Sketch a couple of pictures write a couple of poems
Read a book or two a day
Fifteen mile bike ride in the summer swelter
Crash at grandma’s after twenty four plus hours up
Sunburnt starving but I am still living
Never learned how to be a man but then again
Better than being a rotting corpse mannequin

Everybody is nobody
To somebody
A homebody
Aged female
Children gone
Wrinkled skin
Brown eyes
Rotten teeth
Holds tightly
To old memories
As they slip like mercury
Between her fingers
To be forgotten

Tired old veteran
****** back
Body sore
From the last fall
Hurts to breath
But at least
He is still alive
Holding down
The old folks town

The sidewalk ***
Hungry and lonely
Looking for nothing
Affection forgotten
Joys lost to the
Ravages of time

Little boy bruised
Abused
Miss-used
By angry adults
Tormented by other teens
Hazel eyes hold no light
Only finds hope in
Razor blade delights

The middle aged sage poet
Stumbling through life
Half awake
But more alert then others
Wrinkles of pain
Under his eyes
Those bags are full
And sag so deep
That they burn

Not movie stars
Or pop divas
Nobodies
Forgotten remembered
And lost again
Fragile beauty
Breaking with time
People who I claim
As mine
My brotherhood
We are all beautiful nobodies

Under stars
Bat steals apples
In shadowed leaves

Wide awake in a dream.
It was a bright stadium.
Wide empty lanes of the perimeter
I felt there were some within

A girl rushing, couldn't stay
Spoke to me urgently
"Meet by the Water Tower"

I wandered aimless there were none
To ask the way,
I came upon the edge of moorland
A hill that rose away,
Above, stretched flat on rising *****

Grey stones
Laid together close, as game of tiles.
I could stand on one, both feet

Walking along the bottom edge.
I picked up the left cornerstone.
It was large, heavy carrying at first
Brushing off clinging earth,
Seeing the shadowy shapes engraved,

Went to find the Water Tower.

In the stadiums lanes of white, forlorn,
A woman came to me in uniform
Asked of my purpose.
I told her my plight, she sat me in her car
I looked up

High above.
Shining translucent white container, a tank;
Generating power, suspended along cables and
Containing water.
I wondered at this,
Then she brought a sort of bike
Said "I'll take you now"
Riding pillion both hands holding stone
Thought "I'll surely fall"
As we banked

It was so fast, colours a-blur
Long, far, perilous, vast distance,
When we stopped, she turned.
Alone
Abandoned on the moorland
Rough ragged tufts of grey, green grass,
Forever each way, in mist faded substance

I know this place but I am lost,
The moorland has no directions
Standing so with the cornerstone
Now heavy
Rough, heavy as a world's reflections.

Then from the mist striding t'wards
Tall man upright in strange dress, feathers,
Hide, hair streaming weathered,
Coming into focus stands before me greets
Takes the cornerstone and reads it, hard worked hands
Deep blue eyes, into mine and mind, translating:

" We are of the Sz'ip p T'ik k "
There were clicking sounds,
Means the first ones,
" You are to take a message.
" The message is:
" 'To The Survivor of Your People, say this..

" Survive!' "

Then I am pulled away he's gone,
I open eyes.
Repeating words
Reach for my pen

We went to Conway castle
Charlie and Ibbo and Foxy and me
We climbed up a very tall tower
So far the view almost space we could see

Then Ibbo said,
"Wow look down 'ere"
Peeping over the edge

Being one for a lark in I went and looked down
There was a small interruption
In consciousness
Then I came round
In Charlie's arms as he carried me down
Wobbling on stony steps
Round and round
Down to the ground

Pinkle Purr died on a cold winter's night
The ground too hard to bury her right
So Spotty and I sat by her fire
Till all that remained was the frost and the ash
We went inside and I glanced through the glass
As a small puff of smoke rose from embers last

It was shaped like a cat

My mother was taken and her service was held
Family gathered in sorrowed farewells
But after they gave her to a god she'd not known
They all turned so did I and left her alone
No one to watch as the fire did it's task
Only strangers to watch her spirit unleashed

There's a right of people to care for their dead
But we give up the right to a stranger instead