Hoick

It doesn't have to be situational,
She explained to him.
It can be abstract - free of place -
And just as good.

Just.
Good.

The words rolled in his mouth.

And why the preoccupation with rhyme?
It's childish and unflattering and quote
No poem was ever better for it unquote.

Why.
Rhyme.

He eagerly licked his last malteser.

One more thing,
She urged, hoicking her pants above her hips:
I was horribly, horribly drunk.

The Falling Man

(A relative of James Taylor's Walking Man, who walks while the other man stops and talks.)

The Adventure

the old man moves forward
his face is a fire
his hands blistered claws
that grip the spaces
in front of him

foolish protestant voices
he thought he'd left behind
leave him now
he can only feel his way

the fields of flowers
he saved for them
are gone
he can only see
streaked falling shapes

what he saw when
first told of the adventure
of immolation

Home

Passengers, side by side, shifting as the bus turns
Leftwards and leaning, urbanely unimpressed:
Back.
Pulsing gently between bends, silently and in unison,
All stomaching the churning of
Big black wheels sucking rain-slicked bitumen beneath them.
All effortlessly mourning the routine
Workaday journey past long pavements
Strewn with mashed newsprint
And bowed, scampering salarymen.

One man is leaning the wrong way,
Intent on taking some flesh
From the young woman beside him.
He is strangely alluring, it appears to her, standing now for his stop,
Surrendering his favourite seat and
Stepping off with one eye.

He is quickening for home, food and sexual love,
Having worked his shift
And earned his day.