Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871 - Justin Lowe

Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871

You will no doubt appreciate
the irony, Freddy
it was never to my taste,
as you well know, but
I live in a perpetual state of it
for you, I think, to either
qualify or quantify, God knows...

either way it is ironic, no?
that it should be here
in this dank Brixton flat
I finally eliminate grey from the world

Jenny hovers in the hallway
afraid to come in
we speak like this
her face veiled in twilight
hours days years...

this oppressive London twilight
it seems she lives there
as though sensing I am
the butcher of her world
this grey London world
storms in a million teacups

I could cover a hundred pages like this

please mail me ten pounds, Freddy
and I will send you my notes
my life here is this mountain of paper
like the soot that blackens my windows
ashes of how many cities?

Justin Lowe
(from 'Glass Poems' 2006)
http://www.bluepepper.blogspot.com/

Outside Centrelink - Jane Williams

Outside Centrelink

among the lunch hour execs catching a few rays
a young man with cyclonic eyes aware only of this
fast becoming another day without and what to do
about it breathing through clenched fists the trigger
for anything more taking the usual form
an absentminded brush from a suit filing back
into the system that has failed him yet again or this
(you had to be there) sunlight bouncing off silver
buckled shoes tempting as a free lunch unleashing
weeks of P's and Q's honed into the heels of his
own redundant work boots as he sprints jumps
lands hard on target then simply walks lighter now
uninterrupted steps through parting briefcases it isn't
the stuff of revolutions but on a good day it might
wipe the patent leather smiles from our faces

Jane Williams
http://walleahpress.com.au/FR36Williams.html