Hunter Gatherer

i get up at 6 a.m. and make Ron his breakfast,

clean the floors of the dog’s mess and fill his food bowl.

put new toilet paper on the roller and sit, and hope, and

watch other people, not shit.

a spider crawls across his web and up into the corner of the ceiling,

where he sits and waits, MOTIONLESS, looking down at me.

it seems i'm always trying to stay on top of life that wants to live.

the kids wake like chimps and phone other chimps, a gang -

one doesn't talk, and the other talks too much about nothing and

reminds me of something.

something i have locked away somewhere, out of reach.

a lost deep sea where lightning flashes,

i l l u m i n a t i n g

everything, always.

BIO: Tom is a poet from Devon in the UK and has been published in Punk Noir, Bristol Noir and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.

Four Poems