Last Year's Jam Was Better

Last Year’s Jam Was Better

McGinty breaks the mould, he picks the scab
He swigs his tonic wine in the rotting doorway
Across the street a dog scratches at its bellybutton
And sniffs its own backside
A car drives by crushing a discarded paper cup

I loved the taste of last year’s jam
This year shall not be its equal
Eight rainless weeks saw to that. Then endless rain.
And the weeds returned like useless clutter
I need another holiday

The fence is broken
Sometimes the car wont start
I always knew that Life will always be like this
A bird flew into my window glass half an hour ago
It lay flapping on the path until a cat got it

The tins of soup a dying mother never ate
Uselessly fill my cupboard shelves
I cannot eat them as I do not like Oxtail or Scotch Broth
There is no room for my own groceries
Yet I cannot bin them - for she hated waste

No charity shop will take them - I have phoned around
In desperation I got caught doing reverse shoplifting
The Asian shopkeeper found me placing my cans onto his shelves
I left quickly, backing out, apologising. Carried a dozen tins back home.
I put them back in the cupboard and closed the door.

Late November

Late November

It was a silent time of crushing dark.
The mornings mostly made of wasted hubris
And left-over bile from the previous month.
Her icy shoulders chilled the frosted quilt
I'd grown used to it.

For a decade I'd dreamed of a silent Spring
No March storms to herald a change in season
But a quiet transformation in a warming soil
It wouldn't take much, a few degrees
To make a happy garden.

I made her a hot meal each evening
A grunt of thanks or a scathing nothing.
She actually once told me the vegetables
Were wrongly arranged on her plate
And her handy hot meals stopped after that.

I stood high above Yarrow Valley
Looking down a dead-end road
Subsumed in the fog of a friend's bad death
Blanketed in the numbing chill
Of a long cold morning in late November.

The Dying Of The Light

The Dying Of The Light

There is no light that never goes out
It has faded to nothing from my chair
The phone sits in its cradle and does not ring
There is no-one at the door
I wait to get sleepy as the sunset fades to black
Read a newspaper article about a murderer
Lock the door. Make some cocoa
I go to bed and switch the light out

No-one is here. No-one will come
Any evening bottle of wine is consumed by myself. Alone
I shall not share this bed again
There are no forks in the road ahead of me
My options narrowed too long ago
And lost in the blur of eighteen years of childcare and work
I never noticed that slight, hopeless ache set in.
Take root.

My son is fast asleep in the next room
I heard his gentle breathing
Through years of slumbering cascades of Pokemon and Action Men
His days marked by steady advances in Lego and gaming technology
Swimming pools and sweets
School trips and bedtime stories
A little life’s pageant played out in all the wonder of the world

Sometimes I look ahead with dread for him
Wars. Jobs. The Planet.
But they are too big for him.
My worst fear is that one day
He too might have to wear this
Thin cold vest of loneliness
He too might gaze out and see
The bleakness of the road ahead
Where empty horizons disappear
As the light fades to who knows where.