Double-Headed Dime

Filled with that distinctive

summer unease.

-

The time passing so slowly,

the suffocating heat.

-

A sweating haziness,

the sound when their tyres screeched

the kind of pains you learn but can’t teach.

-

The bleeding streets

peppered with a steady flow of debris,

a chilling breeze

-

the broken bodies

my pulse quickened by the sights

all around.

-

The reactor burst, my reaction hoarse

nights ruined by

the same vision of a hearse, my

reminder of that

generational curse

which I was told not to believe in

but can’t help but feel is real.

-

The water waving, lapping,

huge appetite, waiting,

my eyes wide, this is the game

we play, what we engage in,

crumbling bridges, my broken piano fingers,

-

no more art, no more art.

-

Now the animals are swollen with tumours

and we bury our loved ones below a thin lead lining

I spin in circles on my mechanic bicycle

trying to forget what I saw

pushing that anxiety away by day.

-

Instead it visits, tenfold, by night -

corrupted dreams -

mind tearing at the seams,

eyes shedding tears at

the sight of steel beams.

-

That metallic coffin,

the whirring body,

steaming chimney,

acid rain.

-

The ruins of a lifetime

mind pregnant with the toxins

it all crumbles or melts,

it all turns to dust

which I’m forced to inhale.

-

The infinite ash

slowly clogging up my lungs,

starving like a skinny dog

I can’t bring myself to eat.

-

Ravaged by my own hands,

my own thoughts,

my crooked, breaking frame.

-

Drowning in the brine

of their undefined and untried crimes,

my life decided by my class

pure chance but

they threw a deceptive

double-headed dime.