Poetry

Choices

Damn near dead
My tire marks like scars
Across the tar skin
Of the freeway.
But no panic.
Just acceptance.
And with it; calm action,
A gentle maneuver
As smoke, pieces of tar,
And blurry lights
Flew around me
As fireflies about
A small child
That I; growing up
In the fast city of London,
Would no nothing about
Having never seen fireflies
Except in movies.
And things are never
How they are in the movies;
Especially dying.
I’ve strayed desperately
From this fate: this dark room
At the top of a narrow stairwell
Eleven feet by eleven feet
And a roof that is too damn low.
O! how I tried to leave the occupants
Run off down city streets;
But Los Angeles is no London:
All I encountered were doors
Locked and barred.
No late night carousals
Just vagrants dicking around
In much the same muddled way
As myself. Shocking that I feel
Somewhat akin to the kinless
Somewhat at home with the homeless.
But they reject me from their society
And I wander on: my feet dragging
The conveyor belt earth haplessly.
I’m still up late at night searching
For the answers to riddles
Posed in youth about reality.
What if this were all imagined?
What if I was making it up?
The pain, the madness,
The narcissism?
And what if; after the lies,
Teas, toasts and jams,
What if I ceased to exist?
What if time lapped over me
As elegantly as silk over skin?

And with that; I close,
Murmur an empty staunch
“Goodnight.” To the blinking
City lights of my life.
Perhaps tomorrow I shall wake
Elsewhere; as if by choice.

©Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.