The Wind Outside
by and published in Edition Six of Pomegranate
is like a barrelling tubetrain with failed brakes.
It shakes the scaffolding’s bones. It’s Charlton
Heston rattling the bars at his jailer apes.
It’s wind with its hair down, wind with a hard-on,
with nothing better to do. Town-crier,
‘end is nigh’er, horseman (headless), failure.
It’s Brando’s big scene in A Streetcar Named Desire,
vertigo, Ahab, chimera, drunk sailor.
It punches the tarpaulin, gets tangled in it.
The fight lasts an hour – the thug wind wins,
crosses the window like ransacking soldiers
crossing a trapdoor, beneath which, for minute
on minute we lie, clenched tight as tins.
Then the wind jumps off – and blows out – and smoulders
Jon Stone
Jon Stone is co-creator of cult arts journal Fuselit and new micro-anthology publisher Sidekick Books. He was highly commended in the 2009 National Poetry Competition and his debut pamphlet, Scarecrows, is out now from Happenstance. He blogs at http://fuselit.blogspot.com