Poetry: David H Sutherland

Laundromat Dreams

With the abstract tumble click of a loose coin
The slug of self-service chimes clean.
And the clothes tattered, faded, bleached out
Hide no waste, no guilt. This merely mind over matter.
Day and night the lace foments into space
And the lavender scent swarms your face.
Never believe its as soiled in the rinse. But
Something is lost in each cycle, lost for what
Existence has dubbed extinct. Good bye blue jeans
With your numberless joys, your melancholy knees.
Good bye khaki, trousers, tees whose numberless
Sorrows, numberless holes fill all that is empty
In a whirr whose finish desires powder or assent.

Mistress

Dedication at best is an overfed heifer!
Tug at her udder and the come-hither darling lolls
in a hoarfrost of milk, cream or climax.
Sort of like rainy days, anchovies, Valium, divorce.

So let us stroll to the market, fill our cart with today’s fruit,
take in a show.
Love should be more than a two drink minimum,
less than the cover.
As surely the bouncer knew the slightest breeze trapped
in your hair now garden, turns jungle.
Or the soft down of your pillow as light as helium owes
us no affection.
Darling, let the world as it is stay home, recline in the comfy nest of its
armchair,
or roil in the hazy torpor of today’s sun.

We are no match for its heat, cannot cross this divide, burrow
or fly south for the season, but even then . . .
birds drown in flight.