In My World

in my world
(a poem by Mick Tomlinson)


last night
the four of us wanted to experience
life past midnight,
life past last call,
strife as it wrestled for life inside
the jaws of a hungry fox.
we sat around the table
discussing holes:
in education, inside our souls, in the universe.
at one point I managed to slip away
through the swinging saloon doors,
out back where the cooks
were getting high and counting bricks
in the wall that was their prison.
I listened to passing traffic,
I listened to the sound of tires on rain-soaked pavement
and realized it's the same sound my hole makes
when running against the wind.
we are all just barely hanging on
at times-
to our jobs, to our lovers, to our faith
in the future.
we are fox-jawed and fighting for our lives,
we have stories to tell and piles of books
we'll never read.
this is life behind the blinds of a billion beings.
later that night we joined hands
while the three of you took a leap of faith with me.
shoes off, naked toes dipped
into a seven minute dream.
in my world,
geometry makes love to rainbows
and the universe reveals herself
through an open hole.
we began to fall off, one by one
until only two of us were left standing:
man, woman..
carnivores at the break of dawn,
hungry for more
than just one night of cigarettes and wine,
another dull romance.