Two Poems



    She watches the night.

    Free leaves spin in furious circles

    and tap the glass that harbours him.

    A gust whips around the corner
    to quench the sodium, it fizzes to a blackout.

    Its wrought iron shade spiders and sways,
    the stem of the lamp post barely visible.

    A broken clock juts from the long-abandoned bar,
    its hands loose in the wind.

    He turns from the night that seeks to leak
    through wheezing window,

    jumpy in a frame that rattles
    in disharmony with the squall.

    Traces of moon slice the clouds
    that fill the sky with downy darkness,

    they creep across his mirror,
    haloing him as he passes.

    He smothers the light across the door saddle
    and closes the curtains to contain incantations.

    He gives in to Her.

    Shrink to Fit

    He doesn’t fit, in his ill-fitting clothes.
    His too-big Crombie a part-time pillow,
    blanket, shelter, sometimes just a coat.
    His sodden socks exist
    by a lucky array of stitches,
    housed in leather that yawns at the toe
    as he tramps through puddles that trespass,
    to dampen his mood.

    He stares down the barrel-like bottle,
    its pit-like depths
    draw him into the opaque greenness,
    the fingerprinted label
    peels in the spilling rain
    to top up the puddles
    that dampen his mood.
    Lost in the bagginess of his trousers
    he ties the twine tighter.