John-Ward Leighton

RUN ON POEM…
Chapter 1

At Joe’s on the drive
we talk of mercenaries
and custard tarts
ham on rye
cappuccinos
and all that jive.

New books for my scribbling.
An opening tonight
a lot of work.
Girl with small dog
and a big smile,
yesterday, today, tomorrow,
in one seamless dream
where I’m allowed to write and think
until this life runs out of ink.

On my very privileged shore
there is only the stress
of my greed in wanting
still more.
Bring on the clowns
and they appear
in costumes
colourful and bizarre.

The poem marches into the next day
collecting lines along the way.
I type in time to Wild thing
some love soaked recorded poetry
where the female angst lurks
and obsessing about a fuck that never works.

A slight pause as the poem
goes off into a cul-de-sac
created by the now
ignoring the when
and I just watch the screen
as the phantom appears
and is nothing like
what was originally imagined.

Jamie said his poetry muse
has done gone and fled
and he doesn’t know if it’s on
life support or dead.

Friends from out in the burbs
come to visit me
but I get to see them not
because they have to circle the world
looking for a parking spot.

One parks in the alley
and then has to run
before the tow truck
takes his tally.

The Jimster leaves early
down to one cigarette and hour
and a mood bitchy ugly
and his face does glower.

To have to deal with spoiled inner child
and emotions intense and wild.
You know that in the clutch
that a cigarette is just a rubber crutch.

I watch, thirty eight years away
from my own cigarette crisis,
hoping against hope
he will win his battle
against this legal and lethal dope.

Stiff neck click crunching
as I turn and head on palm
As I, mind racing, engage
and watch my pen spewing words
onto the unfamiliar page.

Blue jeans have swept the planet
tourists from around the world
every Tom, Dick and Janet
togged out in working man’s trousers
with fancy stitching on the pockets.

Our cultures are inundated
with the clothing and music of the Empire
no matter what language we speak.
Girls in camouflage pants
stitched together in third world
sweat shops or in the prison wards
of Gulag Amerika.

Executions on the rise in China
to provide the growing market
of spare body parts for the rich.
Organs yanked from prisoners bleeding bodies
before the echo of the gun shot
that caused their demise has subsided.

This poem has wandered over four pages
and seems to want to go on and on.
The espresso machine drowns
out the Tom Waits sound track song.

Old men pass, faces creased with time and crime
and a frown as if life had just pissed in their corn flakes.
They would have a hard time imagining death
and have no understanding of the outtakes.
It will blind side them in mid thought
and with a parting fart be
a switch turned off and a last rattling breath.

John-Ward Leighton

RUN ON POEM… Chapter 1

RUN ON POEM…
Chapter 1