Boggled

His weekends were spent stumbling,
Trails of suspicion and chaos,

A crazed volunteer of bad habits,
Bent spirits sat squeezing excess.

Inside a thousand fuzzy memories
Filled with greedy old delights,

Where wonder misplaced his adventure,
And his sacrifice boggled despair,

He ate words under bridges
And scoffed at the workers,

He diarised failure and pickled his fortune,
Hunted shadows and purpose

And sank into the former,
In the corner where the lucky lie lost.

They Could Be Heroes

Equilibriums set
At the hollow point zero,

Pirouetting molecules
Of follicles,

Heroes;

Universes dancing
In a fish bowl,

Stethoscopes,

Parallel worlds
And the never-ending
Jesus hope.

Winter’s First Night

There are songs I love
I’ll never need to hear again,

Paintings I’ve cherished
And left lining my memory,

Stories and poems left boxed,

They can all disappear.

I have filed away magic
And led myself into wandering,

New melodies hushing
The night’s bracing winds,

A quizzical wondering
With meandering ease;

And I have watched tramps kiss,

I have seen dogs sniff a million things,

Plus a thousand lost pigeons
All dreaming of coops

As they fight over spent seed
And coo under bridges.

I have drifted through
Winter’s first night,

Whispering songs I’ve forgotten,

Returned home.

It was cold.