Category: Poetry

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#607 On Being a Good Boy

All I wanted was to be a good boy;
A good boy who would not disappoint you, and make
You proud. My being would wipe away your tears. 
I would tiptoe around the eggshells of my toys
And your feelings: mercurial, volatile. I would rake
Away your hurts, and transmute them into my own fears.
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#606 On Your Flag at Half-Mast

In the end, the only thing left of you
Were your ashes, neatly wrapped up in urn;
The pictures, sepia-toned, scattered on tables
As your ex-colleagues and friends took turns 
To give bad speeches and recount feeble
Recollections, probably not all of them true. 

I never really knew you, and could only recall
One conversation that we ever had; something
About the economy or global affairs. Mostly
I think of your final years of hard suffering;
The years that cancer took from you; all
That time when Time was ebbing away, swiftly. 

I hope you've found your peace, at last,
Our hearts now fly your flag, half-mast.
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#603 On Coded Speech

Your whole life, you promised that you would
Be different. You would not be like your own mother,
And you would love all of your own children, each
Of them equally loved. In the end, you smothered
Each of your children with the same poison: rude
Doses of insult and disgust, beneath coded speech.
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#602 On This Box of Broken Hearts

I've trapped a lifetime's worth of memories - 
Letters, photos, broken hearts - they are
Piled on top of each other; shattered fragments
Of lives unrescued, abandoned to Life's vagaries,
Their screams locked away in this box, far
Away from my attention, my daily distracted moments.
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#599 On Death’s Dark Machete

Fate's marionette, you ambled blind
Through Life's dark byways - lost, unmoored.
With every hurt, you hurt in kind, 
Unthinking, Life has left you floored.
  Your eyes alit with Terror's blaze,
  Death's dark machete counts the days. 

(inspired by Paul Auster's father, and all the other traumatised, useless fathers out there)