Streetview

I stand by the gaping window and
wonder how you do it, just watch

madness drive by erratically in its
slow car, round and round.

See the children stomping schoolwards
every morning, slumping back, afternoons,

as old women and men, heads
too heavy and worn to hold aloft.

Garbage scatters like crows quarrelling.
The sun warms the concrete heroically,

but no-one feels it. There are an infinite
number of ways for nothing to happen.

All of them end in emptiness.
In the evening, there is no darkness,

just a curious light laughing at gravity
breaking its laws like ribs, one by one.

Death has finally found a home
in your open mouth. It is

furnished with stolen goods
found discarded by the roadside.

Robert Ford lives by a lake in the north of England. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Antiphon, Dime Show Review, Butcher's Dog and San Pedro River Review. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/.