Poetry: Louis Kasatkin

By Louis Kasatkin

Louis is editorial administrator at www.DestinyPoets.co.uk and founder of Destiny Poets and in his spare time is a civic, community, political activist, blogger and general nuisance to the status quo!

Louis Kasatkin

Farewell, England

I waited years for their answer
which they gave me as I was about to leave,
they said it wasn’t what I knew
but what I’d chosen to believe;
I told them their revelation was less than startling
and didn’t come as any big surprise,
their reasons left much to be desired
as they thumbed thro’ a pack of worn out lies;
They handed me the charge sheet
and told me I had to serve my time,
they didn’t offer proof or evidence of wrong-doing
but insisted I was guilty of a crime;
So I said farewell to my liberty
giving vent to Saxon oaths,
as the new Emperors crowned themselves
they were still without any clothes.
***


The Beggars’ Waltz

Certainty crumbles into dust,
the meaning escapes from our lives
like air from a punctured balloon;
the last of our threadbare hopes
tears asunder,
leaving a gaping hole
that we patch with
remorse and desire,
repairing outward appearances
so that others might
see us differently as we
in turn see them,
and they too are torn;
and so begins again
the slow waltz of beggars,
prying coins from the
feeble grasp of Tomorrow’s largesse;
undermining its certainty
until certainty is gone,
and with the coins we’ve pried
we purchase our next
punctured balloon.
***


Charitable Days

Days are made charitable by their absence,
best off intruding someone else’s eviscerated
existence rather than mine;
Time was when I felt
that I had time,
some substance of it
in my back-pocket ready for
rainy days that sort of thing,
but no, days are not like that,
monstrous they are great
impervious behemoths with their
unrelenting array of hours,
all twenty-four of them;
count them then count them again,
absence makes the heart grow fonder,
in their case absence makes
the days grow longer,
or so it seems to one with
the imprint of the day’s boot
on my face where it had stamped down
with an indifference peculiar to time;
tick tock tick tock as though time didn’t care,
which of course being Time it can’t possibly can it?
Days espouse nothing other than their own concerns
so days are made charitable by their absence,
or so it seems.

Setu, March 2020