getting home

Jesus Joseph John finished work for the day
and wandered back home in his usual way;
He searched for some answer,
trying to understand,
why his life was flowing
through his fingers like sand.

Jesus Joseph John sat in the bar
drinking his beer and hadn’t got far;
Watching  the news
on the big screen TV,
sitting in his corner,
huddled reclusively.

Jesus Joseph John rose with a heave,
no-one there noticed him leave;
He staggered down the road
all on his own,
A fist hit his gut
and he fell with a moan.

Jesus Joseph John got up in a daze
and sung to himself, his mind in a haze;
The kids hanging out
followed him right down the street,
dancing and chanting
and tripping his feet.

Jesus Joseph John fell in the drain
threw up his lunch, his head full of pain;
A woman stopped by,
and came to his aid:
wiping his brow and
to home he was bade.

Jesus Joseph John staggered on up the road
and gradually in his tiredness slowed;
He collapsed in a doorway
and fell there asleep,
in his dreams he was shaken
which troubled him deep.

In the growing dawn light
He awoke to the day;
A new chance to see
If he could find his own way.

The river writes her name

The river writes her name in the land
Claiming her course across the plains;
Uncooperative and temperamental
Opposing all efforts to conform.

“We tried shoring up the banks with
some old cars a few
years ago — didn’t work too well,

We’ve had two 50-year floods this
year alone, you know … “

The river tears the rotting metal from her banks
Resisting constraint and throwing jagged
waste to sandy shore where feet bleed out;
She spills where she meets resistance
Recreating her name from mountain to sea.

© 2009, David Earle.

feelings of home

Lonely isolates
in a southern sea,
Driving north
up the island.

Small towns
restricted acts
of kindness towards
normality.

Holding fast to a
fragile sense
of civilisation
in a wild,

Untameable land of rock and
sand and trees.
Virgin to be
broken blood
spilt on the sheet.

I live at the south end of a long land mass – too large to be a real island, far too small to be a continent. This poem expresses a sense of dissociation that I get travelling out of the city.

© David Earle, 2009