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In the Silence
In the silence before a ball is kicked you think of them hunkered in foxholes huddled in trenches to preserve the privilege to call the ref a cunt In the silence you wonder about equivalent rainbows shining over battlegrounds all their final sounds unheard underneath torrential downpours of ordnance Blood payment in order for us to bey In the silence think about what we don’t know about dressing rooms and war rooms Well laid plans and movements don't always come to fruition Big difference between verbal volleys and literal firing squads The cost of three points and three million men In the silence Before the game you feel the hurt and sadness thinking on those who never got to be overgrown boys who never got to lose themselves exuding frivolous noise. Feelings Dislocated... ...no simple joint to lodge them back in place The tear on my cheek A bittersweet release The closest I’ve felt to myself in months is when I wanted to run off into the night I see them do as I do and not what I say Peeling at layers Truth or dare Name everyone you’ve ever loved You had me at “fine” Arched eyebrow screamed You meant it this time. Boosted The dilapidated department store Now a vaccination centre Fittings and fixtures remain You can sort your hair in the left behind mirror before going back to staring at everyone's shoes trudging furtively as though in a leper colony The signage covered up with children's art forced so young to understand a health service's worth A Marine administers my latest shot caught fighting another war framed by disinformation The hollowed-out haberdashery now used for recovery Another ten minutes to doom scroll the next supposed end of the world. We Feast No More We keep warm over the fires from leftover hearts Quench our thirst under a spigot of wasted tears In this future hope, an illusion consumers until consumed now foraging blindly Picking through lint and speckled sand for mere morsels Our souls, ghosts of people from generations before Once fatted calves grown gluttonous to the point we feast no more The shadow of the beast still reigns supreme but like us scratches for remains Battered and weathered we bludgeon one another for a derisory taste pondering if we're the universe's anomaly The only dumbass intelligent life forms arguing our way through the cosmos. Bio: Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series. Twitter: @tummidge Website: https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/
Fevers of the Mind 
Wow. These are all phenomenal.
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