They float before my eyes like planets I long to reach, tiny white moons I want to crush to dust, the sound of chalk grinding to nothing on a blackboard. I place them on my tongue - Satan's host - the powdery taste of headaches. You stride away, lithe as a stork along the banks of the canal. I call to you that they are not sweets. You fling then the pills to the water. They do not sink but float like the spots, of a disease. On Chalcot Square you cross, as though I am a corpse you don't want to touch. On Arlington Road, the argument hums like the traffic between us. You pull a telephone receiver off the hook. It hangs on its flex like the head of a dead snake. I purchase another packet of paracetemol. I go to a bar in Camden Town to be alone and wash down the pills with cognac. Maybe I took too many, I suddenly think. Maybe twenty could actually kill me and I don't really want to die. I could change my mind. I ask the waitress to call me an ambulance and she gives me water and salt in a glass and the salt taste reminds me of Margaritas once in Paris in Montparnasse. At hospital they make me drink charcoal out of a plastic cup and my mouth is powdered with black dust. I feel I could choke. The last dregs I tip on the sheet. A crumpled sail. I see Art in everything. And in everything there is Art, that dark black pattern on the sheet like a Jackson Pollock abstract as my friend arriving in the doorway of the room. ![]() Maria Heath Beckett was born in North Yorkshire and currently lives in London, UK. Maria has been writing for many years and is now finishing two novels and a memoir and collating her first poetry collections. Some of her writing has been published in magazines and anthologies, such as Tumbleweed Hotel Volume 1 (ed. George Whitman) and In The Company of Poets (Torriano Poets). She has recently had a narrative poem of several pages accepted for an anthology entitled, The Eternal Snow, publisher - Nirala Publications.
1 Comment
10/13/2016 09:27:48 am
This is a sad poem. But if you'll look at it at another's perspective, you'll be able to see that this person still has a hope left of him (or her). We may want to escape our lives, just leave out all the rest and click that reset button. Because that's not how life works, we have to do our best to adapt to the situations we encounter. Life may look a bit dim now but sooner or later, you'll be able to see that ray of sunshine that will guide your way.
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