POEM: TAKEN

Is this seat taken?

Made bright by colours

Seen in dark places.

Like sleep,

Would death be friendly?

Coming and going through these

Forsaken seasons

Or make us cut down our branches

So I could talk all day

Of your misdeeds

Or shove you through drunken pathways

Or bring unity as they so called did.

How else!

They tear at themselves

As wolves do prey

They bed-wet in the parliaments

And say tis an education

As crude as sanity may

Belong to our loose tongues.

How else!

These very men make rhymes

Their cause claim to despise.

Still, you are blind to the traffic lights you see,

A part I held captive

Within this thick skin.

Thus, stars burned their

Shadowed lights out

O'er crinkled unveiled faces

Whom with virgin lips without lipstick covers

Those daughters were urged to kiss their mothers.

And I pitch my tent

Away from you lousy peasants

But cast my net

In your rivers merely deep.

Here still, I possess a punctured breath

And wish sandstorms would rip

The turbans off your faces.

Needless to pray

With fingers crossed across my chest

I mumble this unspoken pledge

Whether cowered or as dwarfs stand

For if suicide harbours such courage

Then lord, let us die by our own hands.

By:

BERYL CALDER