Something Real Instead... Poem by GRANT FRASER

I take coloured bits of card
left lying about,
and scribble middle of night clots,
skirmishes of thinking,

I do not like the look of myself
staring back from wrinkly purple,
emotions that can dot back together,

this is not me, not the thought I hoped
to transcend, in fact there is matchstick
parts, that I see all too well!

if this is not a world, then what is?
by slotting all you see back into it,
while songs on Radio's post me to
much further off places,

the songster, lyricist, men devoted
to beauty and sorrow, who knows?
and ears that drink me up to a well
formed spec of heightened consciousness,

what can I do, the tragic nightly news portends,
death, destruction, suicide missions,
and all I have is a messy scrawl,
of trying to operate in a real pretend world,

I fold them up tight into my back pocket,
and they build up, as time flies,
or dies, and later when I get back,
discard them in the recycle bin....