Poems About Despair by Top Critiquers

I’m a stone in a world of flowers

the curious call of moors,
the old crow language
of wings circling
their ancient dead

peat bodies rotting beneath the weight
of seventies murder. The swaying
New Romantics surrendering to the dark.

I am grey beaches in homeless overcoats,
banshees of Tudor shipwrecks
shaking bone rattles in violent storms.

I am poverty
and steel
and recklessness

an IRA wound on a city wall; coal crowns
of Thatcherite rule haloing unforgiving
stomachs...

Give and take
Take and give
Lose a soul
Gain a soul
Is this what it takes to live in this wretched world?

Kevin walked up the
cloud like steps before he turned
and saw his corpse on the ground.