Guess the Title

The challenge for this poem, should you choose to accept it, is guess the title (or the ‘subject’ of the poem).  I know, I know, sometimes a poem isn’t ‘about’ anything, but this particular one was written in response to a very specific fear (some might say I have too many fears in general).  A much earlier version of this poem appeared in the online multilingual literary (and arts) magazine http://www.respiro.org/

First the little slip.

Name much praised

remembered slightly aslant

like a jigsaw piece chewed and frayed

not quite fitting in its groove.

 

Then a petulant rewrite

of yesterday’s events:

a pout of a travesty

bearing no semblance, no cause, no fruit.

Too stubborn to admit all is haze and indifference.

 

Next, the heartbeat stop before mad scrabble

and dig and delve

to capture that elusive frame

in the broken film of the mind.

 

Finally, the chasms beckoning:

throw self in?

chuck pretence out?

make way for shadows,

population of yesteryear?

 

Darker and darker the woodland cover

hunched, stop-cock breathing,

waiting for the elliptical, haphazard flux to cease

the lynx-bared jaw of foaming bite

those fixed clear eyes of poison fire.

 

Precarious rock after rock

the chamois cleared.

But only just.

 

Next day

next week

its foothold less secure

chasms will close in-

to beckoning pools of blankness.

 

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