Sometimes, a Man Could Cry
Sometimes, I just hold my head,
clasping its wreck of metal. It is just enough
to keep the spine and chest upright,
just enough to wire the jaw into a fixed smile
and fuse and screw up bones; just enough
to keep up.
The world is shuttering, the world
is headlong, its magic sails
past a silver line. The nerves
needle, the soul ghosts itself.
Sometimes, manacled to the earth
not buckling his chains, a man could cry.
Matthew M. C. Smith is a ‘Best of the Net’ and Pushcart prize-nominated Welsh poet from Swansea. He is the author of Origin: 21 Poems, The Keeper of Aeons and a pamphlet Paviland: Ice and Fire. Matthew is the editor of Black Bough Poetry. Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith Insta: @smithmattpoet Also on Facebook.