riches of a poor man | poem

Apr 08, 2023

each week, a bellied man with holes in his pockets

and scars of love scratched across his ‘why me’ face

knocks on my door. he comes nightly,

to speak about how it feels to wake alone

at the tail end of another listless summer

full of nowhere to go, nothing to do type behaviours.

the man has been popping by for some months now,

I wonder if it’s because he hears Otis, Bill, Patti or Nina

drift from my fourth-floor window, through his.

the man has skin the colour of corn, a pub gut

and too much time to source local gifts:

12 pack of beer, carton of smokes, savoury snacks.

where among the living-dead does he find such riches?

up the skirt of a young lover

behind a springless sofa

on a park bench?

he appears in my life like a memory

under the midnight guise of friendly neighbour

with topical news about how he woke alone—naked

(the latter is never relevant)

longing for the same liberal woman

with bouncy breasts, olive skin, and much to say.

he occupies my four walled room, like flatulence

retells what we already know from nights before:

fights about a lack of ambition

it being far more than ‘just a game of football’

pointed fingers, car crash level screams.

sometimes I consider him to be symbolism poet, expressing indirectly.

his pert breasted woman left him (once again) after accusations of an affair

with the demented old man downstairs

who smells of urine, and stashes cash beneath a pillow.

he has a picture perfect

‘say cheese’ smile welded to his face.

it grows too late, we sit on a springless sofa silently blinking:

crushed cans, nub ends, bowls of salted nuts—and crisps.

beyond both of us is an oily sky

busy spitting out stars like it’s the industrial age.

we sit together that way until a dull thud—we never discuss

can again be heard from the flat below.