By: Richard LeDue

A Spiritual Awakening of Sorts

Your undershirt is three days old,
stinks of sweat and whisky,
while the dress shirt is limp
on the floor like a castoff skin,
leaving you fresh, ready
for another lively night
listening to dead musicians
and so sure life isn’t about eight hours of sleep,
rotating your tires regularly,
worrying about ants
ruining a carefully planned picnic
in the park, buying books
just to make a shelf look smart,
or letting love be buried alive
inside your brain, among all the graves
you’ve dug during your time on earth.

It’s Dull

I bent the corner
of my least favourite Bukowski book,
and the most interesting thing I could do
was to pretend not to care
like someone who quietly mourns
a tissue lost out a window,
only to lie awake, worrying
about a littering fine, which is nothing
new for me, and leaves this poem
hoping for an end with a metaphorical comeback,
real blood in the streets sort of fury,
but instead it’s dull
as a butter knife spreading jam
on another hungover Sunday.

The Truest Company

Sunlight as comforting as smiles
we take for granted,
until the morning is a wrinkled face
wondering where the good times went
or how all the blackout drunk nights
illuminated a loneliness
that seems the truest company
one can expect in life.