A sweated dew

A sweated dew

Come morning

Am I any different

To you or anybody

Today or yesterday

Waiting in the dark

Hiding beneath the layers

The folds of skin

The weft of a veil

A curtain of shadows

The end of me

Of you

There is nothing

Not a drum roll

A clarion call

Of welcome

As the coffee pot boils

The toast pops

Morning breaks

Into an earthenware jug

We once bought

From a flea market in Camden

There is nothing proud here

Not now

The weight of ageing

Dying

The passage of empty moments

Catching at my throat

The rasp of it

A voice without music

I am constricted by fear

Guilt

Surviving

In the silence

The cacophony of breathing,

Wet things.

The blood and snot

The heft of it

The wheeze after every

Fevered sneeze

It is the brain that aches

The body is carrion

I wear it as if a sack

I am to be dumped in.

Felled at the end

Loosely limbed, slack-jawed

What matters

Neither tar nor feathers

Make a difference to it

Carried as far as the pit

I spit at the thought of it.

The grind of the day

The beauty of sunlight

Bursting through the cotton

The billow

The expanse of blue

The hateful way it keeps me guessing

Believing

The undeserving nature

Of breathing

The effort of life

The trouble with it.

The way it clings and bites

The claws digging into the hard dirt

The scrabble to keep out

Of the mud

When there is no escaping

Its final demand

The sorrow is in itself

An effort

To remember the beginning

Before it ends