Three poems by David Mac

Three poems
by David Mac

The Days Are Harder Or Is It Just Me?

It’s hard just getting there
anticipating the change
the dream’s arrival
trying to make it
It’s all about the waiting now

Something will happen
you know it
Tell yourself that
Really believe it

Waiting for this big thing to come
to
pull me up into the sky

(Isn’t that called dying?)

It’s a promise, a
final freedom

Just a waiting game now
all we ever do
And
you say this poem is
nothing
I say it’s all about
everything

I tell you
it’s about the stars

######################

No Hidden Meaning

Said to the silhouette:

existence is petty
but sunsets are pretty
Take a look and find out
if you don’t believe me

Thoughts in my belly
of structures, techniques,
incidents I don’t understand

What’s all this observation,
perception, illusory objects
forming feelings and words
that don’t say what I mean?

Words only mean themselves,
nothing else
This poem is not allegorical;
it is
what it is:
nothing

Maybe it’s
less than nothing

But at least that’s something

What more can I say?

Don’t trip up
over your soul
on the way out

####################

A Shudder at Night

‘Those lovely gates of heaven’ was said on a TV channel.
‘He lives in his dreams’ was said on a different TV channel.
Flick through so many channels of your life.
I heard these speeches and wrote them down.

I get to sleep when there’s nothing to do;
there’s nothing to do
but I can’t sleep.

Scared telephone rings next door: ‘Whatchu say?
Don’t talk to me of your dog-tired days!’
Voices of life,
from the hive,
all alive.
Turn my skull to resemble place in my personal history.
Flesh fools the clock:
how long? I’ll sit it out.
What else?

I swear I hear a horse’s mysterious neigh at my window
in the black night space.
Apocalypse so soon? Can’t be. Not yet.
My mind hollow with no-dream.
Thoughts drip out the centre of my head.
Sounds poke-spike my ear.
A shudder in the world.

I heard the girl next door drop her shoes to the floor,
floorboards of earth:
‘Oops, oh shit, I’m sorry!’
that the floorboards
are earth.

What next?
A shudder in the night.
Mick Jagger’s lip-scream on VH1.

It’s 2am and I’m so bored of life.

Everyone’s doing something
now
in the world,
while the sleepers sleep their precious creamy dreams;
they get by; they’ll make it;
and those who can’t, chew anxiously.
Only the losers can’t sleep.
Only the losers stay.

And all this happens till lateness,
and the sounds of keys,
typed words,
just
words.

Author bio:

David Mac’s work has appeared in Ambit, Mud Luscious, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Ink Sweat & Tears, a few poetry collections by United Press, soon in Erbacce, Neon Highway and Urban District Writer, and regularly in Monkey Kettle and Clockwise Cat. He moves at incredibly high speeds and some say can actually bend the light.