The Petting Zoo

roaming round
a ghost village
named after
sea dwelling
nomad creature

well traveled
versed in life saline
tastes freedom on my lips
i am luck personified

overgrown grass
hair unkempt
feelings of sunlight
smack on foreheads
enlightened loneliness

oceans of yellow
tidily twixt churns
of ripe and chunky earth
a tractor sits
waits for work

the track leads me to
the Mark of the beast
I pet the cats
and they pur and squint
smiles of predatory
devious necessary nature

I look at the wildlife
and it gawps back at me
what have i become
to believe they are not
just like me
in my existential
parameter

ambling along through hills of tracks
a passage of scraps in owned land
pressing heat wobbles the edge
of the simulated gameplan

distant pasts stretch backwards
through veiled time
that traps my hopes

Who am i to pet the cats
as it sits and preens its balls
scratch that
lick this
i come to think of us all as pets
waiting bells may ring

satiate the way out of
severe allure of sedative
in the distance
thoughts turn to tears
and twist to joy

this destitute exhibition strokes
animal free from captive dreaming
am i wild and furious?
or just dosed up on
a lonely lack of
closed company

slapping gasps
flip flop eyes pop
i am caught in net
made of nothing buts
ashtray stink
runs risk of overflow

bags full of bin stuff
stares at lazy days
inner brain bubble
cartoon thoughts
carved in comic sans
give me no solace

flyscreen cage
blue faced bottled up rage
ageing adolescent
stuck on the paper
wriggling greying limbs
strike edge of matchbox

fighting for life
whiskey smile risk assessment
aneurysm vein body pops
i'm a liver
of poetic justice
a trap to extinguish
a stroke of genius posed fakery