"cellophaned" poems
My sandwich sits in cellophaned silence.
A caged morsel:
Man’s inhumanity to ham.
Its window displays a lip-smack
of full filling fat.
A ‘snack’ –
so dismissive a word:
I’ve shared smaller portions.
Then the cautions:
SELL BY:
DISPLAY BY:
EAT BY:
(DIGEST BY?)
I think I
will have a beer instead.
Feb 4, 2010
Feb 4, 2010 at 1:34 PM UTC
Has it been four days now?
Must have been. Nearly a week
since I did the deed. It was dark,
and I was hurrying – I didn’t see
his form, the path in front of me.
My careless size-ten shoe came down,
and crushed his hopes and dreams.
My stride stopped mid-step. Sickened
by that sound, the chilling crunch;
I saw him, when I lifted up.
A tragic mix of slime and shrapnel.
And now – although you’ll doubt –
I swear he’s back. I am the mollusc’s
sole unfinished business
on this fast and brutal Earth.
You’ll say it’s in my head, if I report
that I can hear his death
in every mistimed gearshift,
every mouth devouring crisps.
But it’s not my conscience doing this,
it’s him. He’s putting me through hell.
I hear, with every step I take,
the breaking of the tell-tale shell.
Last night, I thought I saw him,
bright and cold, in death.
Slowly sliding next to me,
and felt his tiny, ghostly breath.
‘It was dark!’ I scream. ‘I was hurrying!’
His silence says it all. But still,
you don’t believe me? Come on round,
see the trails across my walls...
and explain the vengeful holes
in my fridge-ridden, cellophaned lettuce.
Jan 17, 2011
Jan 17, 2011 at 7:48 AM UTC
Someone burns their vision of the world
In Western leaves some factory somewhere curled
And leaves the stump to burn upon the green
Where ducks and frogs make their domain,
And drops the package, too, still cellophaned,
Venom for the worms, a note to the society who brained
You - I see your disaffection's ribbon in the grass
And know I feel it, too, and yet, alas,
By all the powers that be, I know,
That I must be the change I want to show.
Apr 16, 2023
Apr 16, 2023 at 2:23 PM UTC