The Naked Troubadour

I Am Everything and Everyone [new poem]

Posted on Mar 1, 2020

I am the poem that no one wants to read
the bird-shit on the washing on the line
the friend with whom your parents disagreed
the nips and tucks performed by Frankenstein

I am the wet dream junkie’s wishful thought
the stuff in which no human wants to tread
a severed air-line floating astronaut
a wide-eyed burned-out former acidhead

I am the game that no one wants to watch
the mangled car which shakes you up for days
the tell-tale stain upon the trousers’ crotch
that thing from which all eyes avert their gaze

I am the bent umbrella in the gale
the awkward question no one ever asks
the semitones in every minor scale
the concept which the pupil never grasps

I am the village idiot who lurchly limps
the single coal which glows in ashes grey
the one who draws you into labyrinths
whose father was a homeless cosmic ray

I am the cloudy skyful breeze-blown strand
of windsleeve humour’s fickle rippling waves
a 3am deserted taxi stand
the fussy parents’ child who misbehaves

I am the restless stone awaiting gusts of wind
the snail without a shell (thus now a slug)
the homeless waif who drowned in slime then grinned
the microscopic insect in a rug

I am the noise which no one’s ears can hear
the solipsistic falling forest tree
yet strangely one who’ll always persevere
an unrepentant nomad refugee

I am the tune all women will detest
the lazy eye which looks the other way
the pupil who has tried to do his best
the one dead flower within the bride’s bouquet

I am the tramp on hinterlands of time
who gave up long ago without a fight
the verse which poets never can make rhyme
but yet who’s never ceased to seek the light

I am the beanstalk reaching to the sky
(the mental patient’s notebook on the bed)
which no one climbs & no one wonders why
(which everyone who thinks and feels has read)

I am the louse inside your pubic hair
the cloud shaped like a bandit on the run
the wind caused by a sudden solar flare
the telescopic sights atop a gun

I am the old guitar which no one plays
which in a dusty corner stands alone
I am an unrepentant castaway
the path to snow-topped mountains’ steppingstone

I am the stranger trapped inside the night
who never sees the girl across the room
whose words are ointment (also dynamite)
condemned to watch the bride (not as the groom)

I am the open wound which never heals
the pus and blood and plasma in the scar
all of which through pain never congeals
I am a worldly failure’s exemplar.

I am the one whose outside lines are thin
so you see I’m everything and everyone
I can’t tell where I or the world begin
but still I smile and sing a happy song

[…to be continued]

© Alan Morrison, 2020