Tuesday 11 July 2017

Stop, Don't Jump!


I have been on a number of suicide prevention courses during my university career, in case I should ever come across a student in distress. Meanwhile national suicide levels continue to rise, particularly among the young, I suspect, as the act becomes more socially acceptable as a means to solve one's problems - an unintended consequence of the push for assisted suicide for the chronically ill - though no suicide charity has dared to speak up so far.  Which prompted the following thoughts on whether a more unconventional approach might be called for if I were to come upon a youngster on the brink.

Stop, Don’t Jump!

Stop, don’t jump!

I’ll have that dewy complexion, those bright eyes, that salon hair, if you don’t want them

I’ll have those admiring male looks, those limitless job opportunities, that chance to start over.

I’m a great believer in recycling unwanted pert breasts and precision perfect teeth

I could do with a new pituitary gland, a new pair of ears, 20/20 vision,

And knees that don’t creak

Which look wow in mini skirts

Your restless energy and raging hormones will be put to good use by me.

It’s true what they say that youth is wasted on the young

You just drink, smoke and fritter it away

Or at the first obstacle, call life a day.

But who asked you to cure cancer?

Just don’t be an a**ehole and look when you cross the road.

That’ll do for starters.

Maybe a random act of kindness here and there?

If you can tear yourself away from your smartphone long enough.

But if you can’t manage life’s basics, hand your meat suit to me

Let me try on that all over tan for size.

I’m sure it’ll fit.

I’ll pout for the rest of your selfies

Send your friends updates so they’ll never know

And you do carry a donor card, right?

What, you’ve decided not to jump after all?

Bugger!


©LS King 2017

Tuesday 4 July 2017

Eternal Youth At My Mother's
























Eternal Youth At My Mother’s 

In the bedroom of my childhood home I fall, I fail, I flail
In fitful draughts of sleep
Wind howling to a whistle
As it sharpens itself
On eaves and chimney corners
Long forgotten creaky floorboards and door hinges
Remembered once more
By the angst-ridden teenager
Now almost middle-aged.
The house has hardly changed
80s Buck Rogers wallpaper and all.
Perhaps if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have either.
Downstairs, I hear my mother burrowing
Through her hoard to the kettle in the kitchen
She wakes early these days
Me? I go back to missing exams in my sleep
And turning up to school
With no bottom uniform half
For a final hour before the alarm bell relieves me
Of another shift of nocturnal incompetence.

 ©LS King 2017