The Cure For A Lemming

A bus
picks up the skins
and leeches,
the busted wealthy.

I plug my ear holes in
to drown the atavistic din
of vulgar sins,
while the aged guard their passes
I am misfit to the masses.

The tin shuttle
stops for a crash ahead
(wonder who is dead?)
My pulse feels the itch
of a jawless black angel.

I strain against the glass
my heart bold as brass
to see the wounded pass,
as others around me
try hard not to see.

A man
waves us on and on we go,
vipers to our funerals
tigers for lust
the love of the dead.
On we drive
like a murder of crows.

I spot a buzzard in the sky
before I close my eyes
to dream of its prey about to die.
A young ladt coughs
I open them again to watch her breasts lift and drop.

This tender chaos
the journey
the slapstick comedy,
boredom and cruelty
everyone is thinking of death
or their world in solitary.
Lemmings try
and I know why...

@Steven Francis poems 2001