Steps of a Ladder

You turn on the light

When it gets dark outside.
Someone is screaming.
Someone just died.

You sit drinking sherry

From cut crystal glass,
While others sip dew
From blackening grass.

Out of the window
You fail to see
The homeless ones crying
For what cannot be.

You throw away boxes

That someone calls home.
When charities call
You hang up the phone.

You choose to forget

The ones you don’t see,
Yet expect to be helped
When you are in need.

While you dine on three courses

Till full to the brim,
Someone survives
On scraps from the bin.

And all you can do

Is hold out your hands.
For you nearly stood
Where someone else stands.

Do you go to bed dreaming

Of how to befriend
Those who wonder till dawn
How the nightmare will end?

Optimism II

To pick up the pieces

And start again,
To dream of sunshine
While standing in rain,
To try and make sense
Where none can be found
And keep your feet
On trembling ground.

Yet you were there

To put me together,
You gave me the strength
To believe in forever.
You picked up the pieces
That I couldn’t find,
Put hope and believing back in my mind.

To wander in darkness

And sleepless nights
In the hope that a friend
Would turn on the lights.
You walked beside me
To show that you care,
And when I reached out
It was you who was there.

Another Orchid

We live contained in separate jars,

Humanity concealed;
Stare vacantly between the bars
Across life’s cruel minefield.

We see the lives of other men,

Feel guilt for being a spy –
Make desperate efforts to wave at them
Who are about to die.

We breath ice messages on our walls

Which no one else can read,
And want to live by different rules –
A want, but not a need.

Irrational movements to afar

Will smash the glass we dread,
Running in life from jar to jar –
Someone’s already dead.

Cocooned within fraudulent liberty

We look back on our days,
Dark corridors of mystery
That reach into a haze.

Different words on different lines,

White orchids have turned black.
We’ll run from jars a million times
When what we left comes back.