We’d gathered in the funeral parlour
To pay our last respects, in a room so cold and alien
To her brother in his coffin
Ghostly white ; his ravished body berthed in his last harbour
Some years had passed since I’d seen her,
Blonde and beautiful , like all her family,
As now I saw and began to wonder
Just how much she could understand , or see.
Heroin had taken him , so easily
A willing passenger on its magic carpet
And sorted all his problems so magically
While weaving his ghastly , unrelenting net
In her glazed eyes I knew she’d just scored
As she looked into the coffin , at his sunken face , so white
As if one waiting in a railway station , bored
Not for not a train or bus , but for a fleece of the powder of delight.
Three years later we again gathered ;
Again in that unwelcome parlour,
And saw her white face so wretched and disheveled
As sister joined her brother ,in death , and in debt ;
to their heroin paramour
| 
Email this Poetry
| 
Add to reading list
