Counting the Cues

Everything gets counted on this ward - knives, spoons, pool balls, despair.

hte voices that tell me that the keys around my neck

open no doors.  I cooled my flesh in the icy floodwaters

and here in this place I am jailing myself.

I look down on the courtyard where the kids are in the gangs still.

The guns and drugs ricochet  between the four walls

and inside my skull.

And we keep on counting

the cues, the balls, the cutlery

the people I love who are dead

who left me here, dying in this place

behind the airlocks that are running out of air.