The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

the loneliness is real enough
caught between ideas of integrity
and life as a thief
you chose to run –
distances disappear beneath
feet flogging pavements
willingly to escape
an inequitable sentence
but in the race to glory
and its palpable fame
you recall who demonised whom
stop short of the line
and their victory – deny them access
to restorative compassion
demonstrate
contempt for the process
© 11 August 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner
by Alan Sillitoe, 1958

Echoes In An Empty Room (rev)

The strident sounds of silence echo
in a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb
of emptied space and barrenness, a
shameful waste – a bitter sadness.

It violates all sense of reason, strips
aside all causal meaning bound inside
encasing wraps that insulate the tap
of time, clings to surfaces debased.

Rhyme of sleep declaims a dark illusion,
deep confusion drains into the random
spaces interspersed beneath the sheets,
the crumbling breath of gentle death.

In sweeting dreams a nothingness that
firms to trap the feeble feet, arrests the
weakened limbs and wraps what lies a-
floor abandoned in this wretched tomb.

Echoes in an empty room embalm you
in a plaster cast; you laugh aghast until
the dawn, jeer and cry, clap for more,
call encore with reverent voice.

And lie alert alone at night listening for
the closing door that ever shuts you out,
defying sound in deafness bound before
your pleasure’s sense was bought in

gentle arms you’d dearly die for.
© 21 August 2006, I.D. Carswell

Not Alone (rev)

Formerly: Abandoned, But Not Alone

Abandoned but not alone
in a carnival kaleidoscope
where the beat goes on – sure
and steady rhythms strong
tho’ the dance is not the same

Abandoned in a fractal frame
shapes unfolding fern-like
fronds debasing a rigid plan
of our sometimes strained but
still amiable relationship

Abandoned by the ways
this late growth gained
credence taking precedence
over ambient years of benign
untutored friendship

Abandoned but not alone
with memories of you
a flower in bloom
renaissance of spring
scent of my dreams
© 27 October 2006, I.D. Carswell