SAY YOUR PRAYERS

 

Now you are nine distilled fires and anguish 

Open after that year.

Birthday boys trail through the air

That crazy crooked smoke trail spiralling through the

Mediterranean sky.

Bright balloons of Eid on the back of a bike in Gaza.

You always want a piece of me but

I don’t mind most of the time. People don’t realise

How much they want from others; how we all erode

From duty. How the silent shuffling day washes the self away.

Still you give joy and we guide it. Caustic. Interrupted. Interned. Drama.

Still every year the swifts come and it happens again; across the world people are

Saying their prayers while bombs fall and presents get torn open.

Light and heavy industry falls into place

Time chimes a fulsome round

In our minds it’s Halloween already.