In a cafe A few days back When my friend On call Took a call Pausing our conversation I spied an older couple At a nearby table They neither talked Nor looked at each other He just read the paper And consulted his phone Without looking up Idly, she scanned the room A sad look […]
The children were told not to stare Or ask any questions about the war At night, when he retreated to his bed They were told to walk on tip toe Or stay outside lest the thunder Of their footsteps remind him Of the gunfire and tanks in the trenches Or the explosion of shrapnel That […]
Crouching in her muddy-kneed jeans A look of open candour in her eyes She selects then plucks the best rocket From her well-weeded garden The girl from the country No stranger to the earth and its odours An hour later at the launch The composed sophisticate Narrowing her eyes To focus on the speech The […]
Time accelerates as you get older A day becomes an hour A week, a day And so on … It’s to do with proportion The bigger the figure below the line The swifter the one above Blink—middle age Blink—old ‘In my heart I’m still wild and kicking In my head I’m still seventeen But in […]
Imagine If just for one hour You could inhabit someone else’s head See yourself from the outside As you really are? Imagine How much you’d learn Seeing all those gestures You know from the inside, Smelling your smell, Feeling your tactile presence? At once you’d understand How credible you are, How well you fill―or don’t―a […]
He got a lot of mileage out of that Z Three letters in one W T Z Mow-t-zart But not as much as we got out of him He died a pauper Was buried in a common grave His body covered in lime So it would quickly disintegrate Leaving no trace Thank D-g they didn’t […]
The small hostel on the Calle de Attocha In the old part of town Up the hill from the station A tiny room with twin beds Looking over the noisy street Breakfasts alone before sunrise In small cafes just off the avenue My morning ritual Journal Black coffee The summer sunshine banished By disrupted time […]
The women Sunday morning Dusty and dishevelled A weekend without washing Tired from the revelry But eager for more The instructress Colourful in her Gypsy dress And African beads Herded them into a rustic grid Her drummers gleeful With their carved gourds And bulbous sticks As the rhythm grew The women drew together In an […]
Dionysius is a filthy beast When released from his bottle Late at night When the music goes wild And the free spirit in the crowd Spins out of control Consuming us all In his rejuvenating fire Peeling back the layers So we don’t care anymore About order and decorum Are free again to face The […]
We always remember the stinging remark That cuts to the heart and affronts our honour Too readily forget the cruel retort or worse The off-hand taunt that provoked the attack © Ian Lilburne 2012