Next Door to the Brewery

Often on leaden days, eddies of air

sift hop vapours into this tight room.

It sooths the scald of my dark patch,

settles in the glasses of public houses.

Bitterness is absorbed by harried bodies

tracing their lifelines on grain tables

branded with Olympian rings.

The brewery creates a space, dapples black

the nesting ground of watching seagulls,

hiding human calls with their screams.

A flurry of malted smoke smothers

the possibility of new Subtopian plans.

Wind tours the cracks of winding pipes,

playing jazz symphonies at dawn.

The first to fourth of factory favours.

Others are the illumination of gardens

by a lone spotlight through the dark,

disused warehouses that shelter pigeons

and monolith weathered steel towers

lying flush against the dithers of tricks

and the furtive scurries of prostitutes.

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PRODIGAL FATHER

Duke’s Story – Part One – I was drinking Black Butte Porter at my favorite bar after a miserable day at work. I’m the actuary at an insurance company that is losing money and possibly having its rating lowered. I tried to tell the president that we need to raise rates, but the marketing head was fighting me all the way. The bad news at work led down a dark hallway into everything else I hated about my life. Here I was in my fifties with few friends, little family left and not much to show for all the years. Wife Sally was about my only joy. The more I drank, the more I started to slide towards depression.

I had had my head down concentrating on my beer and was surprised to see a guy looking at me. Even stranger, he looked a lot like my late father had when he was in his thirties. Dad had done weightlifting in his youth and was totally studly before becoming obese. Except for eye color and his prematurely graying wavy hair, he could have been my father fifty years ago.

I left when I got to the staggering stage. I saw the guy from the bar following me and I worried about him being a mugger. In my state, I couldn’t put up much of a fight. I was surprised that he just gave me a note: “Duke, this is your son Walter. Please don’t contact me. Janine”

My knees buckled and I started to hit the pavement.

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Lightening

The first time he saw her, the sky screamed lightning. That’s what he told anyone who asked in the years after their breakup. He knew it was a desperate move; painting his failure with bold foreshadowing only made him look stupid and weak. Still, it was a chance he was willing to take. At least there would be something on record for people to reference when she moved on to her next victim.

He was sick of feeling like a host for her parasitic needs. The apartment was perpetually trashed no matter how many hours he spent picking up empty pizza boxes, video games or the juice boxes crammed between couch cushions. As fast as he moved, she was faster. Her stamina showed no signs of flagging.

“You should be more respectful,” he’d tell her. But just as quickly, she’d remind him she never forced him; he’d jumped at the chance to give her a place to stay. To make sure she was off the streets and getting regular meals. At least that’s what he’d told her. And himself.

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There are far too many in the world

For anyone to try and number.

Yet they all after a while

will send many into a deep slumber.

There is no doubt that religion in itself

will bore you out of your mind.

I believe we get the gist of it:

let us all be kind.

What is so wrong with religion you may ask.

How about their hypocritical values on which they stand?

A world full of hunger and poverty

but hardly ever do they lend a hand.

Religion at its core may be ideal:

however, now money is the main goal.

Far from what it should be:

to give hope, love, and peace to hurting souls.

Many people see religion as a way

to be able to connect personally to the universe.

All it seems to do is give hope to those

who need it before riding in the back of a Hearse.

The End of Something

Beneath the window’s bay, in a perfectly

angular square of shade, there slopes the

sunken hollow beside a mound of grassy loam.

And in the space lies her remnants, arched yet

lifeless as the void dictates, an existence

rendered idle by the motion of the blade.

She is consorted in indolence, (just

as in the feats of covetousness)

by her partner lying prone in juxtapose.

They were red hot lovers these two,

joined in a licentious collective, until their

ardor paid heed to the soft brogue of steel.

Its whisper so persuasive, as the

contentions of an adulterous tongue,

beguiling lives along a barbed incline

to meet their end. Fleet, sinuous thrusts,

and their vigorous monotony, soon

curbed the wield of fanciful promise.

Whilst song, their song, diminishes to resonance

through a density of fabric, gallant fleets

of soil bound in time to throttled beats.

From a plunging brink towards the fractured

earth, each altruistic wisp gives itself to the

necessary exploits of reprisal.

Lewis is a professional writer and blogger based in Birmingham, UK. He also has a passion for creative writing, and has featured in magazines throughout the UK, U.S. and Oceania.

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