Unfinished Tales, or, A Poem Only a Vogon Could Love.

Unfinished Tales

Gods, the sky is oppressively grey

The leaves are gone

All I see are bare grey branches

Winter is coming?  Nay.

Winter is here.

I see flecks of dull yellow leaves over 1100 Warburton

It isn’t much

The mist lifts.

The walls of 1100 are dull and beige

I look across and focus on a window

Inside, someone hunches over her sink

She turns round

Does she meet my gaze?

I retreat from the window

I see a figure appear 

and quickly fade along the trail behind 1100

I don’t see much

Large thick black books lay stacked upon the coffee table

I have read each one

Past the door to my office

My bookshelves are stacked.  Space is meager

There is no place to secure my bricks of pages

Before me is a dead black screen

on a dead black dresser

whose shelves are sealed shut with moisture

Another plastic slab made for games

stands dusty, unsused.

Knickknacks, tcotchkes for children

Bring softness to the coffee table

A bouquet of eternal plastic flowers

sit in a ceramic pot.

There is no need to tend them.

Dull hisses and sighs of cars and vans

cry from Warburton

Lamps are dim in my home

Stacks of vinyl lean awkwardly

Near the false wood facade

Of the record player.

I realize I am girded with plastic

Flowers, screens, digital clocks,

An unused landline

The laptop perched upon my crotch and legs

On the screen, scripts, notes, texts, designs

Are spread as haphazardly as though they

Were on a desk.

A drama here, a stray thought there

A not so urgent message to my wife.

Gods, the sky is oppressively grey.

- JJB