[untitled]

The mind a lonely place,
much routine, everything orderly,
perhaps sterile. And you know where everything
is. Too calm.

[so]

And then you invite strangers in.
And there're footprints on the rug.
Fires in the kitchen. Laughter
that sounds harsh sometimes.

Spillages spats spittle
awkward silences
stabbing each other with
venomous words squabbling
wobbling teetering into
valuable things

Like that vase which was your self-confidence
or that painting you were fond of
which you called hope.

And the rowdy mob keep hoisting up
your heart like a kite in a f*****g thunder storm,
and you feel prone to ignition, frankly flammable,
truthfully you're already burning but...

Even if I have to come down,
I'll still open the door every time.

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

We are all social creatures after all. Well, I might be an exception. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas" to borrow a line from T.S. Eliot. We don't entertain and I dread "family functions" like holiday meals etc. I'd rather stay at home immersed in a book. I just finished "The City" by Dean Koontz. I can highly recommend it as one of his better novels. Your poem echoes some of my same thoughts about parenting, spills and scrapes and broken dishes etc. that I wrote about in a poem called "fingerprints" because kids leave their indelible fingerprints everywhere. But your poem reflects the spaces in our hearts and minds that we might clutter with considerations of others. Do we let them in? Should we? I guess it's better to be "put out" of our comfort zone than put out of our minds. A body can only withstand so much "alone".