Mark Pollins Poems

Head on the pillow.
Head on the floor.
Head under the ground.
...

The boys are rocking tonight,
There’s a bonfire they have lit,
Little girls - clutching eachothers tiny hands -
Are dancing around the orange flames.
...

I cling to the handle of the heavy fire-door
that keeps the new mall safe from fire.
The hefty push down
helps push you one further step
...

Living inside my two loudspeakers,
Two immaculate black boxes;
And when the screaming and shouting get really bad,
I climb up into the earphones.
...

I’m one of those writers who doesn’t know how to spell.
One of those sunglassed men – so cool – who can’t stop shaking.
One of those beauties with a smiling face,
When a dropp of opera and a few waves of coffee,
...

Seven hours of television a day are watched in an average American home.
The Drug-store cowboy, replaces the Western lone-ranger.
A picture of children smiling in their sleep,
Seems out of place in a shop window on Broadway.
...

Here I sit, wordless,
Marooned, forgotten.
I let my feelings float along with the music:
Oud & guitar.
...

My moody depression is an accumulation of bad sleep, rotten sleep, bark-shredded sleep, and reports from the ports of hell and the volcanoes of Rwanda – the latest “God was here, but left early” disaster summer-camp. If you are white and bleeding for the black cause, you can find plenty of fodder to keep your hungry conscience busy. Cover yourself up with a blanket, as you continue to watch a live broadcast, complete with natural colours and authentic sound. Even the dead-dying must be spread across your screen in immaculate transmission.
...

Was it plasticine they received,
Or was it mud?
Did they try and reshape the wet concrete of my mind,
Or was I allowed to decide in which directions I wouldn’t grow?
...

He has no arms or legs but how he sings
He is obese and has bad eyesight but he is felt in the heart
He is in eternal darkness hasn't got an inkling
But what stories he conceives and tells
...