Tom Pickard
rope
I was writing my book of revisitations
playing a bit part in a melodrama
the angels walked out of
when Michael de Freitas, aka.
Abdul Malik, aka Michael X,
(executed Trinidad 1973)
knocked on my door.
Is Tom Pickard here?
No, I said, but when I see him
I’ll say you called.
Was my rent overdue?
Who would hire the dead, who
require no wages, work all hours,
and for whom conditions
could never be bad enough?
I’ll never know what he wanted,
that man with hell knotted at his neck
till I meet him there.
A grudging dawn
and the grass is grey.
Let there be day when I die
at least a gob of red in the east.
They say there is a light
brighter than the biggest arc
in the dullest prison yard
when rope draws tight
to snap the switch
from this to that.
Page(s) 116
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