Four more from late 2006-2007

The great sadness of the city
fills her heart with a grey gloom.
Its grit and filth have tarnished her
golden locks and dimmed her bright green eyes.

No longer do they sparkle
with pious lustre; the black
voids of her pupils have since
been filled with a jaded grey.

Her radiant skin faded
to a morbid complexion,
once smooth skin now pitted with
the scars of this cursed pox.





He wanders down the narrow,
winding alleys: a derelict
district in a bereft borough.
His right hand clenching a mobile
phone to his ear, his left
thrust deep into his pocket.

That threadbare suit is
so unbecoming; the tatters
of once haute couture now
resemble the slow embalming of
his rotted flesh.

A sorry sight; a scarecrow
in a fallow field slowly
torn apart by solitude and the
constant scratching of beaks and claws
rendering his old,
unwanted clothes a patchwork tragedy.

This ragged soul left alone
in this fallow field to
slowly rot; the epitome of one such lost soul.





The last embers of a great
bonfire now gently smoulder
on their infinite ebony
country. The embers nearest the
centre of the fire glow
brightest, whilst the scattered
lone embers at the fringes
grimly hang onto their existence,
defiantly preserving their dull glow
in the blackest hinterlands
of the fire.

Eventually, even the largest cluster
of the embers silently expire,
leaving tiny flecks of smoke
trailing into the atmosphere.

Despite having been starved and suffocated, the fire
leaves a lasting, blackness where
nothing will e're grow forth again:
one peaceful lifetime has so
ravaged its earth that it will
spend its infinite existence
alone and barren.





Unfounded allegiances
born of inadequacy
married with insecurity;
such an unholy union.

Cackling crows
harp relentlessly
eyeing their quarry.

The alpha female
governs her lacklustre chimps:
monkey see, monkey do.

Their sharpened claws
hack and rake their
unwitting prey, as
the hired teeth
lacerate its thick skin.

Yet they are startled by a growl.
The prey flees, lacerated and sapped;
such fortuitous escapes called upon far too often.