Robert Lawson | + Follow Poet |
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Parasite

I
The beggar outside the supermarket
You swore was picked up later
In a flashy car
Sat there in the sun for 8 hours
While you pissed & moaned
All the way home
To your bookless
Mausoleum 
With a chlorinated pool
Where one day you will 
Face down float
When your sour & blackened
Heart
Is divorced by your body
So wet nurse your rage
Make your piss boil
& your eyeballs pop-a-pop
Can you feel the parasite inside
Laugh-dance while you sleep
It´s fingernails tickle your bladder
Devil face in the bathroom mirror
Your father´s face 
& his father´s too
An unbroken line of
Flightless birds
Who settled for less
Now nested in white rooms
And in early curtain light
Mumble
Parasite
Parasite
Parasite
II
The parasite gloms
The parasite glues
The parasite grasps
The parasite gnaws
The parasite grinds
The parasite grows
III
Us parasites
We live on walls
Arterial roads
Junctions, stations
Sleep on gratings
Doorways, stairways
In fears, in minds
Unlocked cellars
Sun shined rooftops
Camp in midnight chained
Parks
& face wash in near frozen
Fountains
IV
They are the wayward
The serial absconder 
Leather jacket bug-eyed
Glue huffer
Gipsy Davy, pied piper 
Of vagrancy
Plague agent , alleyway 
Shitter
Shifty, shirty
Steal the milk & morning paper
From your dawn step
Mail used condoms, bloody
Needles in Saturday´s letter box
Bring back the cat
Conscription
Short sharp shock
Sulphur and castor oil
To purge the system
Of 
Parasites!
V
The parasite is everywhere
He dares to not speak
Our god-loved tongue
On buses his woman
Wrapped up tight
Against contamination
They cannot meet the
Upstanding eye
Or else stare back
Unblinking
And there are too many
And they block the pavement
And the hospital beds
And they will drown & swarm
All that
Is milky safe and mild
Unless we angry-act
Now
VI
As I rise to leave
He all of a sudden
Soft collars me
Pepe the painter that´s him
Grey´d full rounded out
Asks of the family
And the pueblo
& then the spiel
The one month dead wife
No work and the kid at school
& not even bread in the house
I hand him all the change
In my pocket
Ungrudged
For a (snow) job well done
By parasite surely
I don´t mean him
It´s the head scarfed woman
Cry-pleading
The biblical beard
One leg rolled up
To display scabbed
Medical bolts
The block capital
Cardboard sign
The small dozing dog
& the downturned eyes
The bench sleepers 
Sky ranters
Trash bin rakers
All submarine deep
Cave blind
Lost in some forest
Without a breadcrumb
Trail
All the gutter coins
Of this city will
Never buy them back
That child peace gone
& so to sneer
The cure for cancer
Does not reside or die
With them
But also it won´t
With the likes of me
So who is the parasite
Here?
VII
The careful art of
Containing horror
Bergen-Belsen
In a bubblegum wrapper
The tin loving cup rattles
The wind stings
Untampered by noon-sun
Glare
The abscess throb
Of mortal thoughts 
Sidestepped
Temporary
Out of service
Every 20 yards
A sleeping bag shroud
In theater land
Soho
Tottenham court road
Uncollected refuse
No refuge
The soul cleansing dept
Is on indefinite strike
Living tissue turns to mulch
In time lapsed view
Compassions heat diffuses
& even the rain
Will not stir them.

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