Moment of release

A week has passed away

since he lay down on the dirt to bleed

his way to heaven.

Since then he has made a home

for a bluebottle maggot colony

and lies consumed by the fauna of his own colon,

distended with their gas excretions,

and creaks like stretching leather.

At the moment of release

when his abdomen splits and implodes

it is not his spirit ascends

but a fountain head of metallic blue flies.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Waiting for the R Train

Man dies after being pushed in front of NYC subway train

Wired Update, 4 December 2012

The slightest nudge has changed his perspective

fletched his attention to a focal point

tunnel vision infects the panoply of his senses

blue scented air charges from a tunnel’s jaw

a Mexican wave of synchronized stolen breaths

and the ground beneath his prone body rucks up too

like an undertow before a tidal wave

and he feels the dead weight of anger and hatred

the alienation of being, the sorrow of clinging

and, as he casts those traitors away

discovers the immensity of here and now

and starts to rise up, at first to his feet

but doesn’t stop there, rising up before the train

his own death inconceivable, at least to him.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Legal lows

'Legal high' warning following RockNess Death

Inverness Courier, 10 June 2012

Once, when I respected my elders

a tobacconist was really someone

I could look up to.

Parting with my hair ruffled,

one fist clenched about my change,

a fragrant foil-wrapped block

or a sweet-smelling pouch

in my other hand, forfeiting

an Airfix kit for a duty performed.

Years passed, my gifts grew more

elaborate, English cigarettes

ferried home from France:

HM Customs let it pass,

their one concern, their failure,

that I smoke them myself.

Here, now a respirator breathes

through the dog end

of my still smouldering mother.

She speaks with egg-white eyes

and impermanent marks on a dry-wipe slate.

'I'm frightened,' she scratches out;

I know, I tell her, I know.

Her passing is unexceptional, though,

no clamour for public enquiry.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet