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Empty

If I could make the world as pure
And strange as what I see 
I'd put you in the mirror
I put in front of me." 
Lou Reed, 'Pale Blue Eyes'

These empty spaces
inside of me
composed of God-knows-what:
certainly lacking in originality.

Empty waiting rooms
in empty railways stations
no more smoky-smell of coal and steam.

Caught up upon an evening’s desultoriness
a girl’s slight distress as she leaves the silent ward
mingles with a spine-tingling haunting of the imagination.

A prelude to walking death, echoes the shadows
of those who walked before us;
sitting, once-upon-a-time, in an A&E trauma room
where an isolated cry punctures the sky
disturbs the hush of illness.

Outside the ever present caw-caw-cawing of the brazen crows
across the road, in another country, another century,
when the fire work glow of household fires welcomed
tired soldiers home to share the beds of strangers.

And still the cries bounce from wall-to-wall
echoing through these empty rooms.

.

◄ Distant echoes

Under the Volcano ►

Comments

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John Marks

Fri 30th Dec 2022 19:31

Thank you Rose, Hélène, Stephen, Flyntland and Keith. Flyntland, I think my mood was certainly not manic, more a low level depression that lingers. Rose, I do hope that your derrière is responding to treatment! WE can wallow in emptiness or try to fill the void - that's why I write poetry.

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

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Flyntland

Fri 30th Dec 2022 09:48

This has to be the most haunting poem that I have ever read - we all have those 'empty spaces' inside us - I wonder what your mood was when you wrote it.

<Deleted User> (9882)

Fri 30th Dec 2022 02:05

I would describe this poem if you will pardon my profanity as being not just brilliant poetry but as-

poetry with bollocks, poetry that bites one in the arse

Thank you so much John




Rose 💋

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keith jeffries

Thu 29th Dec 2022 22:24

A highly descriptive poem which allows the imagination to wander and absorb a deeper content. My mind was drawn to the words "Empty waiting rooms in empty railway stations no more smoky-smell of coal and steam". I remember well those days of such travel and the loneliness of those deserted waiting rooms in which all time was lost.
Thank you for this
Keith

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