Sunday.
October.
Leaves race wind.
Darkness creeps in
closer.
Bigg Market.
Cruel autumn mist.
A passion filled throat
croaks:
“The only difference between a man
and a horse
is a man eats porridge and a horse eats
oats.”
The Catholic Evidence Guild.
A wiry woman sways on soap.
Streetlights,
playing about her face,
highlights each contour of her
chiselled skin.
She spits out fire and breathes in
smoke.
Cut.
Two blocks away our poets meet,
uneasily pace the stage.
Raking over the cinders of their
published works,
they search for warmth in the drunken
past.
Communication or division?
Coordination or collision?
Poets are feeding tonight,
driftwood from bed-sitter lands,
whispering lines behind locked doors:
shadows,
frightened creatures,
caves.
Frightened?
Why be frightened?
Deck out our billboards with your
raging verse,
swamp our switchboards with your
anxious calls.
No more of this scribbling in the dark.
You might as well be locked in prison,
as choked in the cells of your own
derision.
Communication or division?
Coordination or collision?
Travelling home by train,
two twitching mates
waggle their sensitised fingers and
laugh.
Communication or division?
Coordination or collision?
KEITH ARMSTRONG
