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.
