Ubiquitous Unravelling
I
Reader, I can’t pretend to know you,
but listen intently enough, as though I do
in the concrete jungle they call
Piccadilly Gardens:
a glass of wine later
and a pint of Hobgoblin
as the conversation meanders like exhaust
fumes through lanes of traffic,
bus routes, tram lines
and the unsuspecting mass of bodies,
between city streets,
through and towards what we already know:
hard to imagine the years of care
amounted to this, no holding hands,
no linking of arms, not a kiss,
only the well ordered yawns
of a first and last face to face encounter.
II
Who could’ve known
that in that parade of flesh
we found ourselves caught up in,
only the dead one would come
to bare teeth
at our lonely conversation,
our conversation about being alone?
No use to lie, no need to sharpen the blade.
Just what has been rejected here –
but the idea of our future selves as giants
traversing landscapes, moor lands
and hill tops, pleasure bound creatures
hell bent on self discovery?
So we annihilate each others dreams,
speaking of mutability
as though our own flesh were indestructible
with all the hubris of solitary bees.
Mark A. Murphy’s first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse was published in November 2013 from Salmon Poetry (Eire). Murphy’s poems have been published in over 100 magazines and ezines in 17 different countries world wide.