Saturday Night Sunday Lunch

(The futility of misplaced faith).

You push me from the crumbling edge
of a tumultuous Saturday,
into the torpor of God’s Day,
to drown there
in other people’s dreams.
But tumbling through that thicket
of the faithful,
washed by the splash of cheap communion wine
my wafer-thin atheism
is passed from mouth to mouth
for Sunday lunch.
And later, replete, our friends depart
to gird their egos once again,
sated by the tasty flesh of my
defenseless crucifixion.

© Graham Sherwood 10/2011

Road Man

(A study on inappropriate footwear).

Those battered soles
that seem to walk half a pace behind
slow-hand clap your every stride
an irritating desultory applause
the metronomic drag and slap
rasps such gritty rhythms.
to a journey without destination.

© Graham Sherwood 10/2011

Sixty

(Carelessly titled piece about time passages).

Are you my guardian demon
or I, your Noah’s dove?
Memories find their way back through the mist,
like the blind ferryman, who knows the tides
and the perilous reef.
They eventually arrive, blown around my legs,
like yesterday’s abandoned newspaper.
Their sharp words bend my ears,
but with the ambivalence of the vine
I shrug them off.
They cannot harm me
I have been standing here too long.
Secretly I seethe, and for a moment you recoil
before goading me with your lion tamer’s chair and whip.
Then your lovely head is placed between my chastised jaws,
and all around the leaves fall beyond the point of no return,
from proud green to embarrassed humble bronze.

© Graham Sherwood 10/2011

Waiting for the words to come

(Word block can be a very difficult condition, not often written about
but often complained over).

The atmosphere in the room is deafeningly silent,
gently squeezing my temples, tasting like fog.
A pregnant desolation, brightness is dark,
your face is firmly turned from mine,
choosing not to hear my cursed appeals.
I am waiting for you, I know you will speak, always do.
You lift a shoulder to give me hope,
but hope flares like a damp match, then dies
a death of cynical dissatisfaction.
Once again, I am face down in this muddy chasm
and all is quiet once more, I sleep.
Then in the warmth and turmoil of a dream
you’re there, unexpected, arms outstretched,
courting me with pretty words.
My muse.

© Graham Sherwood 10/2011