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.
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.
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.
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.