Nick Falkowski

Nick Falkowski is a British poet living in Birmingham, UK. He has degrees in Philosophy and Classics. He started writing poetry from a young age and has a forthcoming chapbook, Recursive Lines.

Breakfast

Darling, secrets should be kept close
to the chest, for the most part.

I sip the juice.

Breakfast, morning
like a cracked egg, so many
hours after dawn.

You crunch on your cereal.

Outside, cement mixers
turn, as birds
drop out the sky.

An omen, you say.

Just eat your breakfast, say I.

Styles of Contending

Demurely, I felt new thoughts
being unleashed. No, I won’t

go that way, the path is covered
in brambles, hawthorns, dead

executives. Better to keep
drifting on the vast ocean

of my doubt. For I lacked only
the clout to make my mind

fully up. Was I angry or subdued?
Beatific or bemused? I longed

to undo all the unsaid words
that rattled around our throats.

Leavings

I held you in the rain
& could not forgive
my need to comfort;

what did you expect?

the crooked trunk of hope
is hollow
is rotten

and we

nothing but
naked pylons

stark & alone

in the endless lightning storms of circumstance.