Forgotten
‘The weather was beautiful that day’
- was what a portion of my memory said
But could I believe it?
perfect aqua chunks clogging
clots jamming the torrential past.
Poem
I touched your back
as if it were the only back
in the universe
I held your arm
with such delicate force
to suggest you were
a fragile princess
I looked into your eyes
using eyes full of
convincing hope
and I recklessly
delivered all my words
like pillows to
smother your distress
but I just could not
force into
our little world
exactly how I felt
maybe because
to lose you in my head alone
is horrible enough
without
the added torture of your emotion
Seldom
1.
I sat by the waterside
watching its sun
dribble past my forefinger
2.
A neck drenched in nausea
for the busses that wait
across the street
but are never on time
3.
Walking forlorn in sweaty rain
past the distillery
and cooling towers
and ecstatic billboards
4.
Jazz trickles from a doorway
before I know it I've
kicked a discarded flyer
three feet forward
just to show I care
5.
Now my head
is a sample of a sample
scrunched and caustic
radio radio radio
6.
I sat watching the river
for hours
feeling your pressure
on the back of my neck
Lint haze
gaze wrapped around
drizzle at taxi ranks
a twilit beam
the dull rushfluid
dropping as glass icicles
below a big bad cloud
there's a pong of asphalt
gigantic chunks of water
like incessant runny snot
only clear and concise
brushing off the new
Uniqlo polo shirt
while across the street
the likely lads
find cover from
this white-plated cyclone
at the Japanese restaurant
and where the normal
rhythmic line of Magic Buses
slides along the soup
just a soaked metal fence
then the intermittent flash
of the temporary lights
© Copyright 2020 John Maher