THE INEVITABLE
COMES AS NO ONE CARES
I’ve been hit hard
as we, the great
Unwashed, are told
‘the vaccine will
Cure all’ and you
can all go back to
Normal now &
so we all did but now
The inevitable; a
high temperature, a
Bad case of the
hot flushes, some
Trouble breathing
whenever I get at
All excited and a
cough that ain’t down
To simply 35 years
of bad smoking as
Now my death can
be chalked up to
Simple government
planning.
I can see it now
as they stand around
The wine cooler in
Downing Street at
Another of their
endless parties that
Ain’t speculating
on how they can save
Money on all the
scroungers like me
Who’ve worked all
the way through
Knowing it would
come back to this
& us being the
lowest of the low, a
Food retail worker
worth nothing now
With my blood on
their hands.
A ROUTINE KIND OF
GUY
I think of my
mother, a year on from
The passing of a
man we both miss, sat
In her chair in her
snug of a room right
Now & I wonder
what she’s up to even
Though I can take
a kind of guess just
Like she could
probably do with me here
As I guess the one
thing I did inherit
From the palmer
line was my need for
Any kind of
routine, no matter
How chaotic, no
matter
How disastrous it
could turn out to be.
Sometimes I fall
on a good one & then
I’ll know I’ve
just got to get on with it
& do it for
the rest of my life…
ROLL & SPARK
UNTIL MADNESS COMES TO SAVE ME
I roll one and
spark
I roll another and
spark
and after a
lifetime of this
I'll roll a final
one and spark
and madness will
at last
come to save me
from the
ordeal of rolling
another
and sparking it to
life.
I DREAM…
Of short skirts
& the flash
Of stocking tops
as my
Radio whines on
its babble
Of getting fit for
the new year
But me, well, I
think I’ll just
Carry on dreaming
these dreams
As I smoke &
drink the ubiquitous.
& WHEN I WAKE
IT’LL START ALL OVER AGAIN
Everyday of late,
almost everyday
For the last two
god-damn years has
Seen some kind of
routine come to
Rule and tomorrow
looks exactly like
Any other one…
I’ll wake, not
Hungover but eager
to get there soon,
And make my
breakfast before I go
For a walk, come
home, eat some lunch
& get back to
this writing life as I send
Words out around
the world for various
Bewildered editors
before a night lost
To a movie, often
a bad one, and some
More smokes and
probably yet more
Booze and then
soon it’ll be time for
My bed to call me
& I’ll know when I
Wake it’ll be the
same thing all over
Again.
Bradford Middleton
lives in Brighton on the UK’s south coast. When he ain’t working his
part-time supermarket job he can often be found either drinking at one of the
many local bars or at home working at the words he dreams will let him escape
this life. All his poetry chapbooks have sold-out now but he does have
several new ones planned and under consideration. Since 2020 he’s been
working on his first proper novel ‘All the Way to the End of the Line’ which he
hopes someone will get to read soon. He tweets occasionally
@BradfordMiddle5.
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