Message

1

The hand can’t rise to a goodbye.

I look away from a city going home.

The Office Order, neatly aligned.

Money detests servant’s roots.

Who’s sick in a clanging toilet in a train?

From city to city, to town to town.

What language, what people?

They all have homes.

2

Grimy hair-oil on the sill.

A dirty rope sags across the room

diagonally in despair.

A caked comb in a peeling drawer.

A cupboard, termite-lined.

The door, open in a sinister yawn.

The changed bed sheet,

bleak, in indigo blotches.

Dust prowls the room like a ghost.

3

After dinner the power trips. Normally.

Sweat bubbles out of a body, open.

In the barred moonlight

the mind thrashes in a cyclical tumble wash.

A text flies to a forbidden number

Of its own.

4

Next morning, on the office desk

a phone call from a home-city code.

A sterile voice in a black peaked cap

enquires in practiced patience.

Consequences are explained in stenciled lines.

5

When the day’s done

And the darkness dances to the cricket’s tune

A trembling urge sizzles

in flames of anger

Wrapping the shame of illicit desire.

A whiplash awaits a slip of emotion.

A full stop

Waiting to explode.

#Poetry & Free Verse