Wednesday, May 20, 2020

John D. Robinson's Tiger-eating Worms, Love in the Prison Exercise Yards, and Calls to Heaven and Hell

TIGERS & WORMS

‘Not even the tigers beat the worms
at the end’
and as we face an unknown, face-
less lethal enemy without
prejudice across the globe,
I have consumed a bottle of
diablo’s chardonnay and
smoked frequent joints, I’ve
swallowed codeine and
diazepam and I step awkwardly
into my back-garden,
wondering how many more
times I’ll have the honour
and pleasure of doing this,
I look toward heaven,
breathe deep of its beauty,
savouring it
like it was the
last time.

THE DAMNED PLACES

Love can be found in
the most damned
places:
in the ravaged souls
of those
whose lives have been
taken by poverty and
disease and
starvation,
in the hell-holes of
addiction, in the
corners and crevices
of the madness of
every day, in the
shadows of sex and
the silhouettes of
regret, in the
hearts of military
conflicts and the
exercise yards of
prisons, in the
hovels of dirty
desperation and
the quietness of
loneliness, in the
voices of protest and
the songs of
disobedience,
in the eyes of the
young, you can see
it, pure and
innocent,
you can find it
in this poem
and its for you.

THE CALL

She told me that
‘I’ve been fucked in heaven,
I’ve been fucked in hell
and I’ve been fucked here’
she gave me a smile that
had been broken and
ignored by most for so
long, for too long:
I smiled back and told
her that I wasn’t going to
fuck-her-over:
‘You know’ she said ‘I
want to believe you’
and I think for that
moment only she did:
‘You call me’ I said
and those were the final
words between us,
face to face: she never did
call and she never will,
maybe I should have
called her but the lines
of heaven and hell are
constantly engaged and I
didn’t have her
personal number.


John D Robinson is a UK poet: hundreds of his poems have appeared online and in print: he has published several chapbooks and 3 full collections: his latest publications are 'Red Dance'  (Uncollected Press  USA) and a poem was included in 'The Ragged Lion Press Journal #2'  UK: