- makeswordswork
Like lip sores tarmac blisters in the rain

Like lip sores tarmac blisters in the rain
and the bus stop roof sags with kindness.
Oil-dregs draw kaleidoscopes by the drain
while the high street creaks sluggish and mindless.
Bad dreams come to Chatham. A peat-soaked phantom
works its way from the fetid river banks
howling its low and loathsome anthem
that grabs the chest and muddies the blood.
Half-cracked walls are breached; in the fireflies
of a hundred dotted evening kitchens
burnt breath strikes the back of bared necks.
Our souls areprone to occult incisions
that flank us open like dried butterflies
and hollow the hopes that we patronise.
We have so much. This is it.
This is it:
and gratitude begins to paralyze
the tendons of our languid tongues.
Something is heavy on the arms, tight
around the neck, and the claret roses
bleach-stung by sharp daylight
fall without hope by the barrack walls.
Specks of rain hit our calves; kiss them.
The dark belly of the clouds holds
a song of an oboe;
charm of a wolf.
It never leaves, like a back-alley puddle
and centuries are hauled on pinched shoulders,
purples eyes, yellow nails, greying stubble.
Streets are smothered in plum-sour smoke
that stain the edges of the clover;
when the clouds part the fire still smoulders.
Written by DAVID DYKES
Artwork by SAMANTHA GOODLET