Easy
This bed is gentle, soft, rocking. I am in utero. I lay upon the white ship,
the sheets lap at my beard, easy living in the morning,
easy in the afternoon.
The bed is tied to my hair, it is knotted in a conch shell,
it tethers me and licks my wounds.
Throughout all the alarms it warms me, pulls my arms into the centre of its cave.
It is quite easy being depressed. It is quite easy.
I see the cats on the lawn all depressed.
Imagine a world without cats, it would be like no mirrors.
I watch the footsteps of the rain, hear its pattering against the window,
another day another dead dream.
I wanted it to rain.
I want it to rain, rain, rain. I ache for it to rain.
Then I cannot move.
I cannot help but steer this ship to quiet, to lonesome.
Through the dark I rub at the wool that is taped to my wit.
Now the waves speak of skies without its sunlight, my disappearing youth,
louder and emptier, then rain and rain and rain.
This is easier than running or bending knackered joints, greater than pleasing
a mass of cocksuckers.
It is easy to fall against the sea and be carried.
This dark mountain range under a bitch moon, sleeping now as babies,
warm in the drifts, swallowed up nice.
They say nothing matters, nothing at all.
Either that or everything does.
Mark G Pennington lives and writes in Kendal, Cumbria. His first poetry collection Barren Stories for Moonlit Mannequins was published by Dempsey and Windle in 2018. His second collection That summer they broke the Birds came out in 2019.