A Push for the Margins

 

A Push for the Margins

 

Sitting inside our boxes within boxes

and seizing lined paper, foolscap -

where we long since abandoned

watermarks, jester’s caps

or anything amusing like that,

or along those lines and pushing

for the margin. ‘Write a date,’

we might command a class

but which one doesn’t matter.

I’m listening for the clatter

of metal on unoiled wheels,

body and wire basket, molded steel,

considering creative efforts

that went into conveying foodstuffs –

tipped into rivers, turned to rust

and think I might write about stuff

like that – and you? But here,

within these walls, we can call

but no one’s listening at all,

we could point it out, and somewhere

in our hearts, we know and we care

but it is all we’ll ever be.

Value of the week? Compassion,

of course, and caring – we’re nations

on nations of striving aspirers

but there’s flaws of floors in highrisers

that I once thought scraped skies -

we’re pointing at what’s obvious

and there’s comfort in penned oblivion.

Let’s push for the margins.

Room enough to scribble columns there

and yet I lately read of a tramp

who’d trollied everything he was,

set his face against the rat-race,

composed in decomposition,

wearing a dressing gown tied with string –

a gang of schoolboys did for him.