Chewing gum daydreams

 

Is this the high

that you wished it

would be?

Alone on

cold paving slab,

asleep at three thirty.

Waste bin life,

as the litter

of your mind

sticks to the

chewing gum daydreams

that you once sought to find.

 

Is this what you wanted to be?

Did you dream as a child to see

the world through a chemical haze?

The detritus of days surrounded by

McDonald's cartons piled high,

to miss so many sunny afternoons

gazing absently at the ground.

 

Or were you blindsided by life,

like a ten-tonne truck

crashing through

your days,

did the hope

slowly drift away

when you could

barely make ends meet?

 

And if you were to

greet your younger self,

would you tell him to pour

his heart into

the things he loved,

or would you tell him

to put away

the childish dreams

and focus on the factory,

like you did,

so many years before?

 

Laid out in a gutter,

laid off just another number,

a statistic, laying static in the tragic

remnants of life, as feet walk idly by…

Navigator

 

I am a ship

sailing

across the stars.

Drifting those

cosmic waves.

I could float for days,

but I need a navigator

to guide the way,

for these seas are vast

and I lost my grip

of the map

some way

back.

 

Could you steer

us to new ground?

A far away star

where hope can be

found flowing across

the planets that surround.

So we could

embark upon a story

lifted from a daydream.

I’ll keep us safe from

the waves and the beasts

from the depths that would

feast on our memories.

I just need

some directions. Please.

 

Could you be the navigator

reading the star chart

that leads to my heart?

It sits on alien sands

awaiting the right pair

of safe hands

to hold it tight.

But if you listen

to the steady echoes

on these stardust nights,

the sounds

of the stars and space

you'll hear its beat

start to race faster

as you get close.

Homesick hopes

 

Homesick hopes

live along

my winding roads.

I'm somewhere

I'm not sure I should be,

where I fear I'm alone

sitting in a pool 

of stagnant memory,

thinking

it's a clear river

of possibility.

 

I don't fit in.

I'm an outsider

in my own story.

Just peering

through a window,

watching

the condensation

dripping

to the pool

at my feet.

 

I should be happy,

at the least.

I should be able

to see a future

in my belief,

I should see hope

in my streetside views,

not this rearview mirror

of ghosts that

keep passing through,

a masquerade of a future

so transparent and untrue.

 

But I feel so lost.

I've wandered

so many highways,

seen too many lay-bys

drifting behind me,

so many hopes dashed

in a drive by of my own making.

That maybe the mistake,

is believing that I'm worth saving.