Cataracts

Cataracts
by David Spittle
I hurt like a fishing rod,
And dream like a television channel.
I battle beetles with lawyers and gamble generosity
In the face of a brick wall.
I make staring a past time, to pass time in passing,
And all my cauldrons sing carols to the storm.
I wrote a recipe for sanity on the receipt of my mind-
When my toes were sectioned, back in ‘Nam;
It tickles when you realise your left foot is institutionalised
And shoes never fit quite as well.
“But I Never GAMBLE”- you hear me say,
And in the passing of the line heard me say
And then following that superfluous extension quoted
“But I Never GAMBLE”.
Each fiscal Lilly pad quivers at the frilled edges
As you slip cigarette limbs into a blank pond of
Anything…
Each and every stagnating word
Floats, curled legs and sodden
Like drowned butterflies sailing
On a wistful breeze.
I make paper aeroplanes for origami towers
And hijack headlines with every single train of thought,
That in the wreckage of collision, was mine to love.
And if cups of tea are quaint
And nuns can rape
And a crucifix is firewood,
Then as I said earlier, you have yet to make a footnote of
My fumbled fire.
The one I juggled as if it were substance
And left my circus hands reeling in fleshless applause.
Manual dexterity suffers after a serious burn
And I too have slurped the animal soup of time-
But I prefer Minestrone, and maintain that table manners
Are of the upmost importance to ping pong doctors
And the happy coats that swish sterile in asylum halls.
Humming computers were made by me to listen
To a breath that you no longer hear,
And I, in hearing,
Feel all the more alone.