I’m rooted to life in a town with bleak
windows and blending in crowds.
Chimney puffs and hacking coughs. The air is
heavy with religion and the Sunday match.
Dare I try...dare I wonder, at your devotion.
I hear a murmur of disapproval/
a growl of dissatisfaction, for wanting better.

My pen is parched. Rebellious even.
Old men with whiskey from rye. The lost and
damned and the red eye beckons in the corner
of your future. The inferno of the poets’ words
matters not to them.
They spit on the sawdust floor.
On a hard Sunday afternoon the draughts of
opinions cannot penetrate those thick glasses
and trench coats that prop up the bars.

Thick nicotine-stained fingers with glasses of
Jameson. Men loathing themselves.
Dare I wonder at the small boy who came back
one day and roared his adult disapproval.

Where time has declined and the men have
reclined their opinions in their old, twilight age.
Over time—nothing’s changed.