In Memoriam

Corridor necessities
Amid vomitoria policies,
A mind in memoriam;
For benches searched
Or even Delphic creeds
Though every turn
Fired memories
Across my synapses,
And how they burned;
I may never achieve
That Field of Reeds
Across the frightening river,
When reason is deserting
And yesteryear still hurting,
Irony is shaped by
Hephaestos beserkly
Hammering my soul
Once golden and yet
Now smouldering,
Malleable, and dirty;
With each strike he sang
A weapon for a war we lost
Before conscription started.

Someone stole the show
While, in cells below I waited;
So I write, not to remember
But instead, to purge, forget,
And now is nothing,
Is all I have left.

Seven

My palm lines are changing –
Life is rearranging,
Slowly, piece by piece.
Scintilla soul,
Tesserae hole,
My apocrypha, at least,
Is over
For now.

A cloud that day,
That cloudless day,
Revealed its fury,
Furies revel
In sixes and sevens.
Spectacles covered,
Pigeons survived,
Dustsheets all over,
Sevens and nines.

Dead escalators.
Tokens to green,
Covered in dust,
Dust and debris.
Sirens pervasive,
And pervasive
We collapsed
Or scratched
Or stretched
As an inflexed
Naked armpit.

Asphyxia,
Suits say die,
So they said,
And so we trust;
Yet truth can be
Evasive.
Grey faces,
Early grey hair
Like a Lowry abroad.
Hatzalah paramedics
Abound in my
Parallel dreams.
I wake
In a sweat
Into boundless rust,
Into blue sky
And a useless sword
To thwart a seam.