Crickets

We’ve all found places on porches where crickets click
And in these dreams the sun is setting
With a pinkish red hue, hazy and bathing
Us, as we bask, blinking as the last of the light
Slowly slips away

Clutch that cardigan tighter, slung over
Sloping shoulders as you lean back
And put your back into the swing seat
Sip on the straw and run thin fingers
Through rich ringlets of hazel brown

Relax and breath, and breath and relax
Little gasps of life enter your lungs
Between the drags
We’re living in the gaps between the day
To day, as each day ends

Whilst this weather holds
And whether you’re still holding her hand
When the seasons change
There’s no reason for ruining rhyme
With a shot of reality squeezing through the catheter

So click, clack and skip away little cricket
Grasshopper, locust or whatever you are
When you’re at home in the garden of my home
As the sun sets and the tide of evening
Takes hold, you’re still sat warm and waiting

For all of this to end, for that alarm to shriek
And buzz, as you stumble into life
Head-first and blurry as it washes over you
The clamour and scuttle of it all
You envy that locust, that cricket

Sat there on your lawn in the dusk
Chirruping, chiming away
And recognise that it’s not the girl
Nor the drink, but the insect
Who truly defines your nights in the gaps

After all, after the blast
The clicking and chirruping is all you’ll hear
Not her, not even the swing of this bench
But only an insect, a noise
To soothe you to sleep with a beer in your hand

Pity Is As Pity Does

She’s happy now
So I hope that serves as
Some small comfort
As you sit sipping scrumpy

Alone in your apartment
Checking your phone for a text
From someone more interesting than
Your plan provider

If light alliteration can amuse and
Entertain then take that up as
Another pastime to help see you through
The longer you last without speaking shit
To her or anyone else can only be time well passed

Your prime, is gone like the wind
Technicolour and technically over
Or is it all a state of mind
What state is yours in right now

After one too many nights
Lapping at the teat of any of your many
Vices, metaphorical and as meaningless
As the last four years of your life

Time is short, or so they say
Youth is fleeting and wasted on the
Young, yet you could do a lot to slow it
Down, stop sliding down the slippery slope
Of slosh, drink, drunk

You are what you eat and if all that defines you
Is your seat at the bar
Your bank balance and beer belly
And the way the barmaids frown
With pity and disgust

Well, what a pity it is that it’s come to this