The gull – September 2024

A lone lost seagull drapes his tattered wings.
That knackered bird he flaps and flaps again.
And through his feathers, morning light he brings
to drones who know not who they are nor when.

Above the streets and putrid musky streams,
cry frantic caws of a beak whipped into haste,
over vagabonds with vapid crumpled dreams:
so subsist the living dying waste.

The crooked white crow he croaks his final calls,
as those twisted up in shame begin to fray
where condensated liqueur fogs the walls—
so fall the stars that never see the day.

That gull since-swamped in Johnnys' briny deeps
still dreams of scents that drift on calmer seas,
to flutter far from all the night-stale creeps,
from land where neither beast nor man is free.