approximate reading time: minutes
Wayne Dean-Richards has shared 18 poems for us to publish during the tail end of the winter and on into summer. The collection is called It's a Mad World, But Funny. Eventually there will be a free, downloadable PDF of all the poems and a planned A6 compendium too. (Links to all of the poems way down the page.)
buying boxer shorts in Next
he’s on a slab a world away.
a victim of his loneliness,
though the doctors put it down
to pneumonia.
his money’s gone and
we’re left with an interpreter’s rendition of his last days:
holes and hollows that claw through darkness and
bring me sweating awake
as if to the sound of his voice calling my name,
or his familiar tap on my door every Friday.
he’s gone and I know it,
but won’t accept it,
can’t believe it,
wait for the arrival of his ashes,
as if that will make a difference.
“where is she?” he cried,
when cancer took my mother.
stole their long planned for retirement.
‘where are you?’” I ask places he left behind,
an eye out for his belligerent face
glimpsed across supermarket aisles.
in time I’ll cease to be like a fresh wound
but right now, blood flows freely
as predators feast on his death -
and I buy boxer shorts in Next.
Essential Info
The 18 poems comprising Wayne Dean-Richards' IT'S A MAD WORLD BUT FUNNY series are listed below. Outsideleft will be publishing them all throughout the spring and summer of 2023. A free downloadable PDF and a limited edition A6 Outsideleft Booklet (for neither profit or loss) of these poems will be available at the end. But not till the end. I think that means mid-September.
