I helped host a poetry night last night, the fourth of a regular annual event. The night before at about 4am (always a good time to write poetry, don't you think?) I wrote a poem for it, a war poem as the theme was the first world war. It's a bit surreal, so I'm not really sure what it's really about. We ran out of time on the night so I didn't have time to read it, so I thought I'd put it here instead.
There were no people,
just a bird,
on a black twisted limb
of something once living,
in a sea of northern clay in the rain.
And I watched him sing,
and blink a black eye
to the cold-soaked day
in the chapel of pain.
And his feathers were brown,
like a moths, in a case,
in a box behind glass in an Edwardian town hall,
and my skin was white
like the salt spit sky.
His gaping mouth gasped,
drowning in silence.
My deaf-ears were grasping for a music unheard,
as I blinked a black eye.
There were no people,
just a bird.
