No Good News

Grey dawn with builder’s tea and buttered toast

my computer eyes the dark world

for sewer stories that stick like burrs.

The woman who axes her boyfriend’s neck

The hacked baby’s video monitor: screaming obscenities.

A multi-orgasmic woman hospitalised.

Tiny deer the size of a hamster

Thirty-eight-million gallon reservoir drained after a drunk teenager pisses in it.

I dredge and edit.

A global swap of click-bait news

from this quiet English village

main-lined to the dark heart of New York

Later, running through woods that are a scrabble of branches under a winter sky

I long to forget news that lodges like silt. No matter how fresh the air.