Dark settles on the walls, the street lamp blinks light,
dies, then blinks again. A moth- stuck inside the room-
pares its wings on the glass, falls to the windowsill,
then does it again. My eyelids do the same.    

I imagine his mouth; the ghosts under  
his tongue slide through the cracks of his teeth,  
find mine, stay there. And the birds at the  
backs of our eyes drink too much to leave.    

"Something there is that does not love a wall."
Judging by the ruins Bob was right.
but there are folks who love them all.
They hide behind them crouched in fright
and there are many kinds of walls.

Some are wood and some are stone.
Some are real and others not.
Those which exist in mind alone
are the ones which never rot.
Redoubts of ignorance seldom fall.

I balance on the edge of that they call my lyric mind
and leave the bloody, cloven steps of razor’s walk behind.
Depression squeals, the choked muse reels and all I’ve wrought is thought.

We watch the flame the candle makes, but no one sees the wick.
The poet hides the closest parts because those parts are sick.
Nous runs amain, it flees the pain and all I write is naught.

What is this fear of showing self, of giving self away?
Mechanical I demonstrate and all I have to say.
I tell a tale and all bewail, but naught of poignant phrase.

There once was a girl from Gorslas,
whose brain cells where shrivelled and sparse.
She was a bit crabby
and her buttocks were flabby
cos she constantly sat on her … Bottom.

Her job was to solder, they said,
which made her feel rancid and dead.
Her chin had grown stubble
and her back was bent double,
which made her near go off her head.

She worked with her hubby; so say,
breathing in fumes every day.
their bones anatomic
looked swollen bubonic
and their youth was soon whittled away.