Bruce J. James
Larkin
I thought I'd lost my way;
the unsafe walk around the perimeter
where no light falls
where circumstance can change
but does not; the world's circumference
shrinks amazingly to a small room,
a bed or cot, where breath is fading;
where the yellowing wallpaper
is an ocean of crazed desire;
where the fire fails to light,
where water freezes in the urn.
I took the left, then the right turn,
then backwards; round in a circle
in the dark, until I glimpsed
a hanging streetlight with the words,
"Go-on" in yellow neon fuze and spit
of all electric's frenzy; the moon was
covered by dense cloud; I felt the empty
winter cold make me ill with damp
and sneezes and groaned - until
I saw a pattern on the pavement
off the ground on which I stood;
a sign indicating I was out of the wood
and back into the street - the furious
light from my window struck me almost dead,
I climbed the stairs and entered,
there was the bed quietly made and supine,
the chair with my coat upon it,
a clock reading half-past-nine
that ticked regularly with a chime on hours;
I sat down and began to write; I wrote
of all my life - I finished quietly
and made some tea - and felt the universe
was satisfied with me.
the unsafe walk around the perimeter
where no light falls
where circumstance can change
but does not; the world's circumference
shrinks amazingly to a small room,
a bed or cot, where breath is fading;
where the yellowing wallpaper
is an ocean of crazed desire;
where the fire fails to light,
where water freezes in the urn.
I took the left, then the right turn,
then backwards; round in a circle
in the dark, until I glimpsed
a hanging streetlight with the words,
"Go-on" in yellow neon fuze and spit
of all electric's frenzy; the moon was
covered by dense cloud; I felt the empty
winter cold make me ill with damp
and sneezes and groaned - until
I saw a pattern on the pavement
off the ground on which I stood;
a sign indicating I was out of the wood
and back into the street - the furious
light from my window struck me almost dead,
I climbed the stairs and entered,
there was the bed quietly made and supine,
the chair with my coat upon it,
a clock reading half-past-nine
that ticked regularly with a chime on hours;
I sat down and began to write; I wrote
of all my life - I finished quietly
and made some tea - and felt the universe
was satisfied with me.
Bruce J James is 64 and Welsh by birth and Irish and French by descent. He has had over 500 poems published. He is a member of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives on the threshold of hoping he'll have a full collection in print before he runs out of capital.
Page(s) 54-55
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