unfinished manuscripts (neglecting her needs)


I got a bunch of hahahas in my underwear drawer
next to a copy of Poetry For Fools and a
half-smoked joint... I take them out
and rattle them in the streets like neon chains
advertising This New Time To Be Getting Along
With People We Secretly Hate...
I call them dream-star-solar-henrymiller-
magic-sex-revolution-mirror-bells-of-luck...
but my girl, well, she calls them
stinky ball-sacks filled
with what's left of my heart
and O my armpits cradle them now
like tiny silver violins and,
as I sweat-drip these words, they play to you so sadly
it would break your heart if I were to tell you what,
if anything, all of this means.



• Bobby Parker is 25, lives in Kidderminster (England) has poems published/accepted in/by Agenda, Obsessed With Pipework, Fire, Iota, Rain Dog, Cauldron, The Coffee House, Curlew, Krax, Weyfarers, Purple Patch and Urban District Writers.