Waste of Time.

by Laura Whelton

You know there was a day once

That stood out from time

Curled hair and tanned legs

A staple of a youthful past

Time was cruel and marks like blood

Soak this skin

Sun like butter now

Thick and blinding

No longer the painted happiness

Which held a hopeful thought

No longer the empty glasses

Held by a friend

Today was long

Cradled the sleeplessness

Worn out fatigue and promised nothing

Was it all a waste of time?

38 years of an alcoholic brother.

by Laura Whelton

How easy to be the drunk

Eking out each day with coins

Shuffling towards another oblivion

With each waking stride.

How easy and forgotten

The long days of alcohol

Drank like a dying man with water

How easy the days

Spent doubled in pain

Vomiting nothing

But the pure torture

Of your condition.

How easy and sad

Begging at street corners

For the same coins

That last only a second

The endless walk

Of the drunk

As he staggers home

Night after lost night

Muttering dissatisfactory

Soliloquies

To the sombre moon

Diluted by spent eyes

How easy

To wake and have a conviction

On how to spend your day

While we soldiers of discipline

Work like animals for survival.

How easy.

Is That It?! (Adult)

by Laura Whelton

Oops I did it again

I let you in

You didn’t stop, no

You went right ahead.

Just like before

I was your whore.

Stripped and bloated

Night time madness

Paints a badly

Drawn portrait.

He is never going to change.

Those lonely edged

Calls on a quiet morning

Ring in my ear.

Yet the tragedy remains

The same.

I am naked and fat.

Stream sweat from your face

Onto breasts

Most forgiving.

But I’m tired now

Tired.

And the semen running down my legs

Aint going nowhere fast.

But I am.

I’ll run in my mind

Until I’m out of wordless breath.

And accept the last

Solid fact,

Of being

Nothing to somebody

Who used to be everything

To me

All I want to do

by Laura Whelton

I sit and tear pages from mis- spelt longings.

I have always loved,

Yet not known what I loved.

Like licking a desert,

Or blow drying the rain.

And the tight lipped questions

Spoken in rhyme,

Have a habit of knowing

Just how I have sinned,

While the silver- tongued

Answers have gone with the wind.

And winning alone

Is the same as losing, in time.

And for the most part

I swim in sublime

Mis-truths and half lies

Whispered at dawn