The Wake of Weekend Warriors

The day began to drip

drool after a belly full.

Cold and greasy.

Smearing our rosy lenses;

turning them to puddles,

to wade through.

***

Drill sergeants, hiding in the flanks,

shriek death threats.

Cars snipe by

in shivers,

and shrapnel rolls

down our wire wool street,

in chase.

***

Your automatic pilot jitters.

My beer jacket flaps, in tatters.

We stagger ... on knives,

down welcome-ready gutters;

the bristling needles of a thorny wind

sweeping us, on.

***

Grateful to the dustpan,

we slap onto polystyrene sheets.

Our game, skinned and tenderised.

Innards splayed in a taxidermy of what-the-fuck?

We stiffen the air as we bleed out.

Our lost metal.

***

Daylight spears through slits

and splits our skulls.

We hack.

Sawdust through raw throats,

the ruination of a night's grit

... and cigarettes.

***

The stink of stale sweat crusts,

against icy porcelain.

Our swollen salted sockets start to seal up,

and tongues hang out, dry;

between teeth no longer able to chew

into our faces.

***

Crumpled, we wait

for the tumble drier to finish

its spin,

for the alarm of last night's memory to stop

its ring,

for those fucking birds to cease

their din,

for the numb to come,

to go...

again.

***

Author's note:

This poem was entered into Vocal's Sensational Poetry Challenge. The prompt was:

Write a poem inspired by the five senses.

I really do not think that Vocal expected a poem based on the after-effects of a large night out. This poem does not exactly stir poetic waters - it urinates them, frankly. I guess I missed the point of the brief!

When I write poetry, it is often brash, rawly emotional, and loaded with imagery we would rather not soak our souls in. I often wonder if I miss the wavelength of poetry entirely. That said, if, as Carol Ann Duffy describes, "Poetry is the music of being human", then, surely, there has to be a place for some heavy metal souls.