2 New Poems

Ducking The Question

As player pianos plucked out the last strains

of old Sinatra, we ducked beneath the barroom's

smokey facade, ashen dragons breathing coal dust

across the grandfather-like chimes of digital wall clocks.

It was fourty-and-three seconds with the coach bus

driver's puffing on hand-rolled cigarettes, flicking

ash under the bridge's prison limestone, adds

colour to the swirl of dreaming 10-pence pieces,

before I noticed your stepping boots, running built

in genuflection to all time's approach, much the better

than half-torn collections of faux-suede, I called

myself in half-jest, knowing the remainder too true.

Sleeping Early

Under rug swept, neuroticism of broken glass,

of toothy cliff walls fallen between in 4/4 time;

last of the bottles sink drained, last of

the three-sided shade I felt as crimson destiny,

you as fickle copper turning Irish post box.

I'd know it's all just half-heard sayings scribbled

in textbook margins, denied by the very words

wormed between, the grim echo of water spouts

still; some portion could have seem faint gold glimmer,

you'd know that too, but lacked belief.

Chest cough syrup fever dreams, tossed clock chimings,

turning light switches off-on in waiting, curtains

drawn to heavy-block the sound of reckless hearts,

the tone of less cowardly souls;

you might feel the same some night.