Beulah

Twisted door frames, aching
and torn, wood flaking crumbles,
damp seeps and tumbles
through the walls and mind.
Brown carpet with rotting
walls. Abject waste of noble grace.
Never talk of silent anger
behind the folded face.

Smell of confusion hangs in the air
subtle stench of stillness and care.
Damp paper peels in the hall
white chalk frowning wall.
Rooms of receipts rotting
a mind, lost. Love squatted here
alongside two lives' cost.
A soft still place of subtle fear.

A love I could never understand.
Never touching, crooked hands
saving water saving grace
cold and aching. Black fireplace.

Yellow seat caved and depressed
to incontinence and sweat.
Aging and dying together
in separate rooms they slept.

Whitechapel

Eyes unfocused blearily stare
tied with tubes and greasy hair
a weakened state with fading skin,
resigned to a cancer within.

Yellowed feet from twisted sheets
his son arranges with hesitant care
faltering words after silent beats,
grey-blue fingers resting there.

Tubes ivy wind the bleached sheets
biting in through veins and wrists.
To the left a man in stoic silence sits
he cannot speak;
his greying throat is slit.

A Veil

Cynicism burning,
cold sickness turning.
Black and shaking inside
a cold river runs sloshing
down my sides. Tears sprung,
I’m only one.

A façade held up to light
shows through like broken glass.
Fear consumes me, fight or flight,
a sudden kick. My life is farce.

I find myself waiting, listening
to a silence that stretches on forever.
Bleak tinged with white, touching together
all I can never grip.

Living is waiting to be found out.
All that follows is death.