Shortcut

Dream holes and desire paths –
those spire views and bared routes –
those modern urban lay lines –
guiding light and human shifts –

letting sound and choice drift
until the unbuilt gets put down
and our tracks are lost to tarmac –
when our reveries are blocked up –

once the empty churches are sold
and the open parks are enclosed
by signs halting walking on grass –
we will lose the ways we made

Zero Four Thirty

For a man who has done his natural duty,
death is as natural as sleep. GS

Here we meet again
you no longer a friend
you jolt – a waking itch
this drugged portend

This unnatural discontent
which sleep is for me
it is a sickly thing

It is as if rest itself
is my disease

It is as if my register
of a simple expectation
of a longed-for sopor
no more allows it to admit

Yet we will drift in daytime’s
impolite light
with eyelids weighted
by the night
just enough to stop me seeing things

This puzzle of so many pieces
which darkness has become
You – my new foe –
my agonist – my bedlam

E100419

The curtain moves as if asleep
those slight adjustments

but set by breeze
which is laced with the heat

promised today
over the news

Roads will melt
old men will fade

skin will burn
to such rude reds

This is the latest I have lain
after another night

of the new normal
of wakings and stiffness

in the places of which
Leonard complained