Waiting

Our poetry group was talking about waiting - not sure why. We definitely thought that waiting was something there was too much of. Here is a picture of some birds waiting for food, or could it be a bus? My effort was written after doing some ironing.

WAITING

Waiting is kneeling before what you want:

the hottest tears jut from your face,

a salty crust might form:

just wait.

Waiting might mean tearing your clothes:

you'll shiver like a monk's turtled loins,

eviscerated by cold;asexual in dark blue limbo

but the only choice is to wait.

Waiting will require greeting

those who do not understand

the famine: like an ox cooing at other oxen

on a simulated TV plain,you'll just shuffle along

nothing doing: simply wait.

Waiting - you'll need bloodlike steel,

a blade cutting through doubt

like an icecream through August mouths,

or an eel chomping through weed

not knowing if that carp child

is really there: just go and wait

for a bit, eschew agnostics,and wait.

Wait - why wait - this is just tin-town chit-chat.

You're not stopped by Auschwitz wire

or the massed armies of evil

glaring across the living-room floor;

you're not a mouse held hostage

in a no-reprieve Midlands lab

or a cat wrapped up for good by flat-cheeked Egyptians.

You won't be damaged forever

if you pick up life like a juicy roast leg

- just leave the bone but remember

its job. Why not decorate your room

with cheerful suns of what is to come,

jump right now in the wide warm sea of your life

and swim to its furthest fun-filled depths?

You turnip: rooted in the muck of your mind

you're frazzled by patience: grow up!

What's that? that thing you're waiting to do

disgusts you. I can read it too:

no worries, yes, it's bad, and

I, I, I, I, I must dash.