The lament of the fag ash lil’

© Copyright Liz Routledge, 2010

There’s a couple of fag ash lil’s
holdin’ up the bar of a Friday night
suckin’ in a lungful of poison
yellowing teeth, yellowing digits
puckered lips like a clenched bumhole
exhaling nicotine yarns through crêpy lungs
boozy lunch confessions, sozzle’d sweat; fuesty breath
preserving things long dead.
Not buried, as yet.

When youth is gone, desire muddled, thoughts tangled
rose colored memories tinted with sentimentality
blurry with wishful ness, recycled histrionics
littered with corpses, draped with imaginary B grade filters
or enhanced for a laugh down the well worn path
of a much told tale…I could’ve been…
I was gonna… …One day…

Through the haze of smoke, and mirrors
life eludes, addictions ensue take root, like lantana
a host of choking weeds contaminate any blueprint divine
stifling miracles of DNA, and large sections of the brain remain
dormant and our souls … sing the blues.
Wistful sighs, plaintive cries escape their lips
like a wheeling bird, a furious gull, who thinks
I should‘ve been a swallow, but all I feel is hollow
the seeds of my potential fall on the fallow, stony ground
of the human condition.

Briefly the sound of sorrow
a fragment of soul hangs in the air
wafts it’s way into the branches of a nearby tree
comforted by cool leaves, rising still further
to join a host of unspoken wails
hanging homeless over the earth
to revisit you on a windy day.