Scribbled Thoughts

22:1 Food Discrimination

I don’t do it from boredom or stress,

it’s not a way to distract.

Rarely is it even intentional!

I’ll be packing up some sausage rolls,

into four they must go,

but sometimes there’s a less-than-perfect one

and it is destined for the bin.

In my head I hear a little voice,

vulnerable and scared,

‘Please, I can’t help being misshapen,

don’t discriminate against me.

I still taste like the others, don’t deny me my purpose!’

I’ll hear it scream as I throw it away,

its weeping haunting me.

I shake and scream, ‘It’s not alive!’

before I continue on.

This happens also when I’m making sandwiches

and need to separate tomato slices,

only two are needed per product

and yet they cling to their neighbours.

‘Don’t do this! We’ve suffered so much already.

Don’t force us apart forever!’

And so I’ve broken families, lovers and friends this way.

I hear them cry out for each other as I do my tasks.

An overactive imagination, maybe,

a very distracting one.

One day, perhaps, I can just do my job

and not worry about the misery I am causing.

21:43

Pressing your dead paw and nose

into paper, one last humiliation

in death so we can gain our

memorial to display

how much we cared.

21:42

Overdue book, not from absence but

as a desperate plea to notice.

This was just a parody idea from a mistake I made in a different poem, where I made it sound like someone was marrying a castle.

21:41

She emerged, newly married to her beautiful home,

ignoring the bemused stares of their wedding guests.

The vicar, under pain of death, had stuttered

through the ceremony, joining a girl and

building in holy matrimony, till death do them part.

Many pondered what death would mean for a building

but didn’t utter their thoughts aloud.

21:40

Your special friend, you laugh in jest,

like it’s a funny mistake and

not one shredding at my heart.

People always assuming that because

you organised it, it is all your

money, only you work hard,

he belonged to you,

and I was not worthy of him.

Not my special friend.

21:39

Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.

He’s dead now, no pain can touch him.

Neither can you.

That’s your punishment for assuming

you know everything.

The next few poems were written after a beloved pet died.

21:38

How many litres of tears are you worth?

More than your little body ever held.

21:37

Hospice stuck in an industry park,

no calm signs of nature

to comfort the dying.

21:36

Not shaking the grass

to reveal the details within,

beneath,

around.

Wind captures in a dance

but its roots stay hidden.

Tease me all you want,

I will not reveal

my secrets.

21:35

A house for the dead

which only has one floor.

Coffins and urns shoved

and rearranged within all

available gaps. Corpse-neighbours

rattle in protest, dead flesh

whacking at wood invaders

in their dead-space.

Respect amongst the departed?

Decay-stench in protest,

ignored by noses that no

longer work. Throats trying

to remember forming words,

shouts, a way to be heard.

The lights are shut off

for the night.

They remain silent, dead to the world.