You leave the safety
of your front gate
and enter into fear.
The early morning quiet
magnifies your every movement
into a noise - footsteps,
breath, the sound
of arms scraping
against a coat.
You don't want
to be heard.
There is nothing
to hold onto
in this ocean of streets,
houses and motorcars.
The world is bottomless
and beneath your feet
there is terror.
You are now
too far out.
You try and hold
your breath
as you begin
to feel the panic grip.
The mind thrashes
in a pointless effort
to surface but you
are too deep.
A scream gets stuck
in your throat.
Somehow you survive,
get washed up
feeling wrung out
and alone
on the shores
of yourself.
Beached between
guilt and shame,
you hide
in that familiar place
you keep coming back to,
time and time again.
The moon had got itself tangled up
in a glass telephone kiosk.
Tricks of light do not apply to moonlight,
for it is a ghost
haunting its face only through earthy reflections.
It looks to us to see it.
The city was strangely quiet,
motorcars grew distant,
Like shadows upon cobbled pathways,
the clip clop of horse's hooves
could be heard to be passing-by.
For a moment,
time had slipped, between the cracks of the pavement,
I was convinced that the moon
was trying to phone me.
Standing as still as any wind-swayed lamppost
I listened raptly,
eventually the dull roar of modern traffic came back.
The moon had broken free and had returned,
to the darkening sky.
In the empty telephone booth
an old fashioned, Bakelite receiver
dangled from its curled chord,
while the night eerily hummed on.
I have a home with harbour views.
I like to walk after the rains.
The TV’s turned on to the news.
My body’s full of pains.
I’ve slept and slept until the walls
Echo with softness at my groans.
I’ve slept hard through the distant calls
And motorcars with drones.
So frowning, if I must get up,
I blanket-wrap myself,
And pour away the coffee cup,
And tidy-up the shelf.
All the nice things in life!
By Stanley Russell Harris
The new mad author
& A Poetry Soup honourably mentioned poet
All the nice things in life!
Are said to be the cause of strife.
Some even can shorten your life.
Sugar is one oh so sweet.
That’s something to cut down to eat.
Salt also is said to be bad.
A lot on fish and chips I’ve had.
Exhaust fumes from motorcars.
Air fresheners in the house and car.
All those chemicals we inhale.
No wonder we are sick and pale.
Too much sun is bad it’s true.
So cover our skin in chemicals, we do.
So much preservative we digest.
What else is bad I can ingest?
Now fizzy drinks must also go.
Those full of sugar or so low.
So if you do, none of these.
Life should be like a fresh breeze!
Absorbed by happenstance, left flailing in the pouring rain,
As it dripped from the hanging trees,
The branches wept, stripped bare again,
Riddled with winter’s disease.
How scythes cut nerves when I saw no return
When I reached the perimeter fence,
Holding the wire, tears that burn
Jewels of ice so intense.
The parkland turned to arenas of mud,
And the bandstand of concrete visually crumbled,
Run, I would have, yet the chilling of my blood
Caused my mind to trip on thoughts that stumbled.
Distracted by leaves, you didn’t see me by the side of the road,
You declined and you turned a blind eye,
The motorcars jammed as some new highway code
Commanded the engines to die.
Caught in the crossfire and bound to reflect,
As you surfed past the rush hour flow
On paths that once crossed, no more intersect,
Just traffic with no place to go.
The windows turned to mosaics of frost,
When the glass and its patterns slowly imploded,
I could not reach you from days that I lost,
Just stood by as my future exploded.
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