I’m ever so still as I look at the room:
one mattress, stained and folded on the floor;
great stretches of vacant, unpapered wall-space;
a radiator I want to fit my hand round;
and an ashtray piled with cigarette butts -
a hunted creature’s squalid nest,
yellow newspaper spread round the mattress
as if for protection.

‘Well, what do you think?’ he asks me.
‘I don’t like your shaggy hair,’ I almost say,
‘and you stink of failure.’

No baby crying, which surprises me,
and a view on the street I can see myself looking at,
coffee mug in hand, rain soft on the window. (more…)