Random Hope Poem by Garry Stanton

Random Hope


Time- many mouthed demon.
Consequence- fickle beast.

I kiss your mouth, Time,
and I hold on to your every
second. You float by, a
mayfly.

I am nostalgic for those
Great Days, of
four years,
four minutes
ago.

Do you stow away, Time,
in a dark or light place?
May I rejoin you, wherever you are,
For the onward journey, or
at journey’s end?

Or have you gone,
Now untouchable, unknowable?
Will I know your minute
again? I am sad with the thought
of not.

It’s not that I think you do not care,
Time. You don’t even see me, us.
Maybe it’s a velvet apathy,
A gossamer, exquisite
Indifference.
Perspective.

Washing lines, linear
Signals of my class,
Hang above
Hard concrete, the
Washing hanging ghosts
Of laundry days,
Dead afternoons,
Bored and boring
Sundays.

I recall them, in my
Haze. I now
Gaze
At the backs of leaves, pale,
They are, intriguing,
unreachable,
The thigh of that
beautiful woman.

This country
Feels
Smells
Green. A
synaesthetic’s
Wet dream.
July sky
Bleeds
Orange into
Me, eastern broken
Promise.

It is easy to hate yourself.
Every cloud is a mirror.
Every ocean a graveyard.

I cross out words
With savagery. I write
Hard, in this
Inadequate
Linguistic
Cul-de-sac.

The drive. Roadkill sleeps, forever,
On the road. Where else?
Freshly-killed, it is,
And scrutinized from on high
By not-too-proud raptors.



As the car
Passes through
Air,
My hair is swept
Out and away. The distillery
Aroma chokes us, brown, woody.
Scrappy hedgerows, whizzing away,
Demand a cut.

The summer
Vibrates. Tremulous.
Electricity. Something will
Happen, here, in the Old World,
Or in
America, the New.

The planet feels tight, an
existential
Spring, coiled,
Expectant.