Abortion

I wonder what it is to kill a life

Sneaking surreptitiously into the clinic,

With fear, sometimes shame,

At other times desperation.

Fending off uncomfortable questions,

“Married?”, “ Unmarried?”, “Love?”, “Drunk?”.

And then scalpel and metal,

And a life which could have been

Ceases to breathe.

I kill dreams every night,

One abortion past midnight

That’s what my appointment diary says.

In bed when I see the distant blinking of the stars,

I throttle and sigh for the astronaut I couldn’t be.

The aeroplane that flies away

That somber thunder from its engines,

Assaults the evening by the Thames,

That I willed myself into believing

Would be mine one day.

With every squabble

I cease to be the man I wished to be,

Fading like half remembered dreams

Which walk backwards into oblivion.

Every day I kill myself, bit by bit,

Amidst screaming hawkers

Grumbling housewives

And stumbling principles.

In the half shut eyes

Of a sterile revolution,

Little by little,

I give myself up.

And like cars rushing at GET SET GREEN,

Days whizz by

And my dreams crawl towards their premature graves,

And a life which could have been

Ceases to breathe.