Mike Ferguson
Confession
Catharsis and storm drain. How the wave of a hand absolves and awaits the next gesture. To seek forgiveness from the wronged in their abject destruction at your hands. Penance so swift and immediate, it ought to rank with the sub four-minute mile. Intention is everything. That ol’ prodigal fallacy again. The Healing of the Sealing. Sacrament from the return of a long and loved debauchery. Sin’s. Judge and jury through the conduit from a garment to a believing. A Roman Catholic App. Tell Her what you did #MeToo. If the first is true and the second a lie, where does the third sit on the Arc of Reconciliation?
Waiting a Long Time
In case a certain little lady walks by. Time passes on a high in a citadel. Fulfilment is not it having reached the brim. And then two holy ghosts come along. When reaching that buttress reveals the next one. If it is the status quo you will know what is coming. The franchises for hanging around were sold out long ago, ironically. All those who have joined the queue to tell their stories of standing around. When the rain came it hadn’t changed.
In the Palm of a Hand
An unlikely place for the inscription of control. Where mercy has life lines. Red spots and peeling skin are beyond yours. It does not mean that one when saying you must choose the right hand to read. The irony there is so much on pain. Fawning like a caress. Knowing there rather than the back is to hold all the secrets and subterfuge. Idiomatic of the inner part, unless a supplicant.
Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK and his poetry appears widely in online magazines. His most recent published work is the chapbook 'Precarious Real' (Maquette Press, 2016) and the music poems anthology 'Yesterday's Music Today' co-edited with Rupert Loydell (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015).