Road Bones

Castaway souls
marching matinee idols,
and the whiskey drum
beats to death songs
and china hic ups.
Alive on Angel street,
asleep in parcels.

Desperate city,
paper world
of soup kitchens.
It rains salted cider
outside the gangrene casinos.
Gutter rot,
liver aches and shivers
dying slippery deaths.

Smoked arthritus
and knotted snakeskin,
knock the door
forget to answer,
double crossing storms
whip the flowered bones,
a petrol streak on water...

@Steven Francis poems 1993