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…