Cry Me A Canal

I once kept a barge on the tears I beckoned from you.

There were just enough of them

for the council to charge a mooring fee,

and the wreckage below was exactly what I needed to stay afloat.

It wasn’t much, hardly enough room to swing a cat

(or swing, full stop),

and it got awfully cold whenever I forgot to yank up the floorboards,

bend and crack them into shape and carve a campfire

from the flesh we’d made -

And sometimes the severed arm of a shopping trolley

or the guts of another, long-sunken barge

would contort like idle sinew

and creak their way to the surface.

They’d peer from beneath the wash.

Come and have a swim!

They’d say;

The water’s fine.

And now that your tears have run dry

my barge has capsized on nothing

and sunk into the torrid mud

the hull subsumed in jaws of cold iron, half-dead.

Cry me a canal

so I can sail off your sorrow

again.