Sunday, September 29, 2019

Jonathan Butcher - Two Pieces

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield, England. He has had work appear in various print and online publications including: Popshot, Ex-Ex Literature, Silver Pinion The Transnational, Sick-Lit, Drunk Monkeys, The Morning Star, and others. He edits the online poetry journal 'Fixator Press', through which his third chapbook, 'Corroded Gardens' was published.   
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Headstones

//A strip of shadows over headstones, the rest of others decimated at angles, letters and moss now smudged, that slow sink into chips of wood, a slope of hand placed wild flowers/The tree with that one grave under its shade, a final root of concrete and memories, a disturbance unwanted; like heat penetrated sleep/Those battered trinkets, old toys now distant with fur like mattered swamp vines, encased in a spread gesture of loss, adopted by any space here willing/That metal cage of  plastic bags and half chewed stems, a single white stone, half sunk, illuminated without cause/A batch of daisies spread only over where we are unjustified to tread, almost smirking with their snug authority/The horizon pasture broken by concrete and cogs, yet  incognizant in regards to their disturbance/ That discarded plastic Orchid that reflects this light, and remains cracked in that decades old stone/Each slab now misplaced; each one separated from a singular structure//


***
Traveling Backwards

The former passageways slowly merging into the
contrived miniature puddles/to those grey towers,
the hidden threads of barbwire conveniently rejected,
 between roses to open when required/ 
less desirable paintwork as alive as this trespass
the entrance by the smog and bile/translucent 
and only out of footprints broken, offering the clouds
remain at this time never make contact/
duties in demand repudiating of memorial, 
a blessing reprehensible blind eyes at their own 
cloud of dust/the day missed slowly past, those 
clouds only offer false security/clothes you wear a
statement, refusing contact/this night surrounds
conversation cut, the significance of those rows,
dwelling now numbed/and you question the relevance 
around this glass, by that taste, less bitter, now finally 
at last allowed/a constant cycle but which burns, 
offering us both a sliver of freedom.


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