AN: I wrote this piece about half an hour ago at a barbeque with members of my old youth club. After the initial idea I looked around for inspiration for the imagery, which explains the sausage and the pretzel and the flowers (it was in a friend’s garden). Not sure where the shrunken head bit comes from though. Today has been a bit of a day for nostalgia for me, because before the BBQ I was at an event at my old primary school which is moving building. I’m not sure how the nostalgia comes out in the poem, but it’s there.

Lament to Belonging

A pretzel in a bag of crisps
A drop of blood in a sea of tears
A scuffed shoe on a polished shelf
A dying blade of grass in a green bed

You can be
But you can’t belong

A half-empty water bottle
A cracked skull in a display of shrunken heads
A snow-white bluebell
A dagger in a rack of swords

You can see
But you can’t understand
You can cry
But smiling hurts more

A charcoal sausage that fell through the grill
A withered tulip in a field of roses
A stinging nettle growing round the pansies
A bent nail in the coffin

You can laugh
But I see the true humour
You can stop
But I’ll keep going over the edge

You can’t cry for me
I feel nothing
And I feel everything

Darkness closes in