“If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.”
LEONARD COHEN
Bank Holiday. Chucking down. Down King Chuck. Whaddya say? Famous Blue Raincoat. Suzanne. So Long, Marianne. If I knew where they came from, I’d go there as well. Maybe even stay. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, there’s a biopic where an elderly Nimoy portrays an elderly Cohen. Both great poets. I’m not sure where these three came from. But I do know that I was there just long enough to bear witness and then scribble something down. Slip it into my pocket. Leave it alone until I had almost forgotten it….
THE NIGHTTIME SKY IS NEVER EMPTY by Steven Holding.
“The heavens are a dot-to-dot puzzle: join them up, you’ll see God’s face,”
“It’d take infinite lifetimes to trace lines between the constellations,” I reply.
When you say you need space, I know it's not written in the stars. You're Halley’s comet, passing my Earth.
Maybe, I’ll see you again, in seventy-five years.
HISTORY DEPICTED BY A DISCARDED TRAVEL PASS, MARKING A PAGE IN A SECONDHAND PAPERBACK (OF POEMS BY THIS AUTHOR) by Steven Holding.
Shelved in-between Heaney and Hughes; tear-stained and dog-eared. Costing ninety-nine pence, containing a relationship’s remains: one train ticket.
An out-of-date return; destination to departing station. Unused, abused, one torn corner repurposed for roach.
Imagine; stoned, stranded, abandoned. Never knowing the poem bookmarked was written about you.
Travelling on different tracks.
TRESPASS by Steven Holding.
It’s a bird at first, caught on barbwire. Crossing the field, it changes; an amateur magician’s secret revealed.
Underpants. Shit-stained. Tainted stink painting the breeze brown.
Who’d do this?
The wind shifts, familiar stench rising from a nearby ditch. It reminds me of the killing floor.
I’m frightened of what I will find.
END OF TRANSMISSION. OVER AND OUT.
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