Is it just me?

Is it just me?

When I could be talking

To T S Eliot instead of

Trying to get back to sleep.

A dream I was having

Like all the other ones

When I can’t find the people I love.

I told Ginsberg to push off and

There is no future in believing

A discussion I was having

With Bertrand Russell

Over tea and shortbread

Sitting around a table,

Shaped like a missile

With a peace sign design

Etched into a glass top,

Was ever going to change the world.

Late at night

I forget about rhyming and meter

It always seems like a joke

The whole reliance on style.

I thought an acrostic

Was a knitting pattern.

If I could, I would rather

Get back to the dream

When I look up at the balcony

Of a tumbledown house

And peeping above the roof

I see the sun rising in the east

But not over Juliette

Or anybody I care about.

Although they are never too far away

So close, I could swear

They were in the next room

Until I go in there

Only to find I am sharing my digs

With Bukowski.

He was stealing the last of the whisky

From under the sink

The emergency stash

I thought I had sunk

Before the flood.

God knows where I was

It looked like a house I had lived in

Before the world went to hell.

I wake up, cold

The duvet on the floor

The sound of birds outside

Playing tag

Reminding me that life goes on.

And in the real world

For somebody, somewhere

There is magic.