Poetry

Lorenzo Fasola

By

Christopher Hopkins

The darkness at the bottom of the glass

Don’t think it switches on,

with another Friday night drink.

The animals sinking jars,

to stop a rising disaffection.

Then the count down of the walk home.

The urgency in horror.

Don’t think it’s something

which controls him.

Makes him walk to the line,

and then drags the brood ragged.

It’s always there.

Sometimes it wears a tie

and buys the milk.

Picks up the kids on time

and loves in his own way.

It’s always there.

Crocodile eyes at the waters edge.

Snap, snap, snap.

You know that relief,

watching at the river bank,

when the wildebeest gets away?

But you know those leathered jaws

will still kill to eat.

For those behind the silent doors,

canned lipped and curtains closed,

tonight brings a pitiful anticipation.

Don’t think it’s the darkness from the drink,

that drives this animal to lunge.

Don’t dare feel anything for him.

Ghosts of machinery

Ghosts of machines sit in the clouds unseen.

The giants’ backs outlined,

by a tracing paper sun,

but their shadows don’t reach down

the hillside anymore.

The wildlife aren’t scared off.

Making homes in the ruins of toil,

while the foxes eye the street foul,

through the splinters of the bus stop at the gates.

An ex-town,

a paragraph on glossed note.

A common history,

a washed novelty,

for the trickle of heritage coins.

Christopher Hopkins

I was born and raised in Neath, South Wales, surrounded by machines and trees, until my early twenties before moving to Oxford. I currently reside in Canterbury at the ripe old age of 41.

I enjoy read Heaney, Kevin Powers, Thomas (D & E) and Fred Voss amongst others.

Poetry has been my ladder out of some dark places.