3 poems from Keith Suddrey

Sleep needs a third floor

Drenched sheets over an old battered armchair,
kiss a pomegranate and place it on the ground
this shall be my brain, to grow a phantom child
from its clenching seeds, no edible part shall remain.
This morning the dawn chorus has been orchestrated,             
rumour has it that the third floor of my house will disappear
only reality knows there has only ever been two floors,
yet sometimes in the middle of the night, on the landing
strange wooden growths appear, looking like a staircase.
I count ninety six steps up to a distant door, somewhere,
but before it can belong, finding itself in the wrong place,
its gone, leaving something or nothing to become.
I remove the wet sheets, in answer to the birds,
far off, the faint rumble of thunder brushing trees. 

Fallen angel
Lola formed her prescient
words behind ruby red lips

the cracks in her makeup
beginning to break through,

perhaps the slugholed dawn
had done its very worst

save for a peace declared in the
undiminished shallow,

where memory revels, prepared
to correct any madness.

Earth has swallowed the
cheekbone she once kissed,

taken the line of chin into its
mould, where twilight sleeps,

broken glass and a bullet,
frame a melting tattoo.

You'll have to turn this parked
car to rust and bitter joy

before light cracks through this
vicious pathology,

where time and cunning have
buried a smoking gun.

Sunlight breaks through the mist,
removing heavens veil,

so she could no longer conceal
the torpid pit of hell,

nor dissolve the thistle flame,
burning in her heart

leaving its wound that tightens
around any empathy

Every Wednesday, she visits the
seen of her crime,

no hope, no cause, only anger
at her fathomless fall.

              That final roll

Roll the dice and kiss your arse
goodbye forever

snake eyes are the mother of
your spent nights,

as lucky as a dead elephant in a
shower room

that no longer functions as an 
unexpected insert.

There is something about
deaths inevitablility

chiseling away like some
joyous master mason,

who turns out one ice sculpture
after another

till even the unseeing begin to 
notice the smell.

This is where a demon
demands his own certainty

a subtle violence or asleep in
bed, never to wake,

he will take his souls wherever
he finds them

into that enduring farewell of
the gobsmacked

There is no demanding the best
of three rolls

unsettling as it may seem to
you in your prime,

I'll come and collect what is
due to my big cheese

there's no sliced pickles or
complimentary wine,

this is the last line, that final
certain punchline.





Bio: Born in 1953, Keith Suddrey is a Grimsby-based poet and artist. Now retired, he worked formerly as an art instructor for adults with autism.