Trying not to disturb sleeping madness
In my little underground welfare room
Drinking yesterday away and hiding from today in my typewriter
I look into a black hole of depression
Typing out a lost life spent in society’s wasteland
Hating myself with evidence
and yes you also
I head out into the dark rains of January
In steel boots to the slave labour pool
I walk into a stale-aired office to put my mark on the worksheet
The place is packed like rotting sardines
and old man sleeping in his his workboots has pissed himself
Moving seats
As I watch in disbelief
While skinny rat-faced drug atticts get all the jobs
I end up on a construction site making $8 an hour
Working beside some kid half my age
He tells me he’s making $22.50 an hour
With hated eyes on me
Society has tried to stop me from becoming a loser
Not understanding
It’s part of my destiny
It hangs it’s heavy signs on me as I march through rush hour
Heading for the downtown Eastside
Just to pick up a cheque for $64 minus the $12 goverment fee
I head now for the bar
Sit in a dirty fish bowl smoking room
In the corner behind blue eyes
With pen, paper and write down sleeping madness of poetry.
Copyright © 2009 and 2017 by Henry Doyle
Published in Geist Magazine and in Thursdays,2. These Words: Writings from the Carnegie.Edited by Elee Krajiii Gardiner and John Mikhail Asfour, Otter Press,Vancouver, BC. www.thursdayspoemandprose.ca
February 13, 2010
Categories: Poetry . . Author: Henry Doyle . Comments: Leave a comment