This poem first appeared in Issue Six of Tincture Journal, available for purchase here.

This cicada season,

don’t blink.

Yawning lawns think they’re hay, all

my daylight savings have been stolen

by a fraudulent river.

Libraries close, vacate in vacation as

small balls bounce on TV. My bicycle trammels

the surquedry of fowl our whispers

are ships scrambling onto rhythms of wind.

We sail towards failure

where songs are condign.

There’s the belly laugh

as certainty slips on that time-honoured banana.

Comic is the last grace, the science of otiosity high

distinction at the edge of our extinction.

Why do I keep stuffing up?

The last speciality, an incontinence of deed

that’s in our seed, the DNA.

Do Not Attribute

music is in the skipped beats

what’s-his-name drops his fame

the volume shrinks

the less we think.

Over thirty-five years Les Wicks has performed at festivals, schools, prison etc., and has been published in over 250 different magazines, anthologies and newspapers across eighteen countries in ten languages. He conducts workshops and runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses and poetry published on the surface of a river. His eleventh book of poetry is Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience) (Puncher & Wattmann, 2013).