The Departed


they can disappear
as readily as patches of light
from a screen





Metronome


To wake, as if given a fright,
To know today has no tonight,
To watch a cord dangle the light;

To watch the watch, to clock the clock,
To hear, as the key fits the lock,
The tinnitus of tick and tock

Grow louder; to hear the heart boom,
To see the door enter the room,
To know that now the time has come.





North Atlantic September 

Dance in my head the thought that I am there
Amongst the heaving wreckage, kept awake
By light insistent.  The cold weight of air
Settles around me, my arms and legs ache
To stay afloat, my clothes grow heavier
(Those clinging soaked survivors that persist).
Is it that night is darker under water
That spurs the flagging spirit to resist?

Torture of the inhuman Arctic chill
Pummels the body to numbness till, at last,
You reach a point where you cease to struggle,
The point at which you truly have a past
For this is the end to end all  –  the now
You cannot rise from, Lazarus-like, somehow.





Asylum

The word alarms
sends shrill sound down
crazy mazes of corridors
followers in stainless white who give chase
 
There are echoes as in after
shouts of retreat from some forgotten zone
nothing to be afraid of
unimpeachable silence