Education
I’ll tell you who I think about
in the late hours, the wee
cold down hours, the spare
slow bare hours, when sleep slopes
laughing from the bed,
when the crowd kicks
at the lame foot of it
and you welcome in all
the faces of the midnight ghosts.
It is not the gold-toothed man
from the Brixton night
out to scare my stoned trespasses
not the voice on the phone
in a foreign room
hissing some implacable need
not a blank-eyed Russian
in a vile white trench coat
who cleared a bar with a fake gun
not the driver who slid
by me as I walked
blithely down the centre of a street.
No. It is the slender man, sallow
and genteel, who once
took the time to explain
all the things I could not do
Daniel Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives and works in London. As well as appearing previously on Ink Sweat and Tears, his poems have been published in numerous places, including Atrium, Eyeflash, and Under The Radar. His chapbook Arboreal Days is published by Red Ceilings Press.