The Wood Won't Burn

Her fate ignites a sight into the bucket
She sighs so deep the world is airless
Making history shapes in her mind;
Curling in her neat chicken feet fingers
Her memories dusty in colourless garments
Girls stood quietly near a broken swing.

A voice from yesterdays high window
Greets the floor breaking everything
Slimy sound rivulets along todays path
Slugs up her leg like cold fat syntax;
Clasped on dry line factory ravens beak
Grim grimy pegs too brittle to ever break.

The dry leprous grass stinks of the dead ones
Warming that gutless bucket of soapy suds
Two luckless flies circle romantically
An airless world wording a foul retreat;
Each proboscis sucking in the hitherto
Less thought of days behind them.

His Lowry dusting brush in milky jam jar
A scent of turpentine upon each button
To clear his ear with a black match;
From here he can see her there
Blistered old rusty allotment shed
Where a bed of old news papers rests.

In the quiet
He eats tinned sardines with cold fingers
In the quiet
She hangs her head along the washing line.