Bar Of Grief Poem by Frances Macaulay Forde

Upturned bottles once lined with military order
on dusty, termite-rotten shelves. Fingerprints,
clear spaces of use, caught by the shafts of daylight
through pin-holes where nails have been.

A puddle of spilt pain, beneath an upturned bench.
Life, wasted in boozy stench lies forgotten,
punished for excess, while determined creatures
march with hunger towards rotten snacks.
Dirt's secret world survives in semi-darkness.

Corrugated walls, rusting-red and brown. Drips
where rain had been, left tracks as if guiding
to the next place. A dark, dank, mud-bed
suitable for long soft round things
to slither and slide through eyes now closed.
Still focused on nightmare dreams, gone before.


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