Day Sixteen

(For more information on my 'April Challenge' see HERE)

(81)LOST ADAM

Adam sleeps on a bench in the park. He doesn’t look like Adam, but he is. Under the dirt and the newspapers and the not shaved and his hair all this way and that. Used to be a bed he slept in and that bed was mine. I miss Adam.

(82)COMA

Elspeth could sleep anywhere anytime. On the edge of a knife her mother used to say and it wasn’t far from truth. It was a sickness is what it was; nobody knew. And like sleeping beauty she lies in a hospital bed waiting for a prince to kiss her awake.

(83)MY HUSBAND ONCE

I watch him as he sleeps. There in the park, birdsong murmurs in his ears and his knotted skin like wood when it is old. And he sleeps sound, like he never does at home, like he really belongs here in the warming sun and all the world looking on.

(84)BEGGAR

They move him on from time to time. He goes without complaint. There’s shop doorways he can curl up in, park benches with his name on them, and a bed at the hostel if the weather’s bad. He relies on the kindness of strangers and dropped pennies in his hand.

(85)FRUSTRATION IN THIS WORLD

Listen! Can you hear? His dream whispers. The bottle-fed mutterings of a man deep in his drink and he mutters under his breath, his dog-breath, and if you listen you will hear: poetry of a sort, and all the frustrations of a poet’s search for meaning in this fucking world.