Exit Strategies

After years and years

She planned and planned and planned

The train ticket sits - looking back at her - a loaded gun.

On the top: the dog desiring a walk

The stumbling block trips once or twice even more

If required.

There are other worlds beneath the dead leaves —

- scuffed by -

Mindless boots chugging along and along for too long.
The dog can rely on a message from his own private language.
He cannot read Wittgenstein

Yet knows his mind.

Jonathan Beale has poems published in print, online, and tablets of stone. His work can be found in such books as 'Drowning' and 'The Poet as Sociopath' (Scar publications), and recent work has been published in Anti Heroin Chic, Dissident Voices, Red Fez, and Sheepshead Review.

His first collection of poetry, The Destinations of Raxiera. is published by Hammer & Anvil.

He lives in deepest Surrey.

Find more by Jonathan Beale in the Author Index.