The Dying Upper Class

Levitate
Above oiled silk parasols
And tilted top hats
Ascend
Above waxed mustaches
Propped up by astonished mouths
With widened eyes
Assaulted eyes
Raining monocles
To swing like pendulums
From laundered vests
Hover
Above turquoise railings
Over barnacled piles
Mantled by
Weather-beaten boards
Float
Along gently
With the thick salt air
Past Palace Pier
And her pebble shore
Drift
On out to where
Grey sea greets grey sky
The neutral womb
Of a muddled horizon

Runner-Runner

You defy the inevitable
Gliding over statistical probability
And sure things
A faith-shaker
Meant to destroy souls
And poison confident minds
With the fear of
A type of uncertainty
That would stagger
Heisenberg himself
You are the Hail Mary
On mud-slickened fields
When time stops
You are the phalanx
Of twelve black craters
Crowning ivory plateaus
Admitting quarter to my enemy
When slaughter was so imminent
You are the runner-runner
Drowning all that is right
In the depths of The River
And you make me sick

Nothing Fancy

For years he lay prostrate
Pinned down by the gross weight
Of nothing fancy

Yes, frozen on his own account
By dreams of greatness tantamount
To nothing fancy

A man’s own meekness we’ll forgive
To spot success so fugitive
A life so useless kept to live
Is nothing fancy