Ants
We shared a cigarette on our elbows,
the city steaming in it’s city heat –
bright and orange. Ignorant below,
the bed pushed right up to the window;
a lazed pew for your endearing sport;
the sketching of a stranger’s life. Of course,
I always turned them into undertakers,
sexual deviants or marriage breakers,
or a Highwayman whose lost his horse.
I was bow-legged, lashings epics In the air;
you were right to mass-produce the shorts.
Each ant to you from five floors high
was full of hope and hope, you said,
was deadness in the eye. Each ant to you
walked a certain pace for a certain cause,
turned a certain corner; there was pregnancy
in every pause. I found you at the station
and took you home to introduce you to the nation,
lips as sweet as iced scotch butter, cracked
at perfect points and full with drowsy anticipation.
to be published in Pulsar Magazine Sept 2006