Amphora

I've slept inside a bedroom warm and staid
for all my boresome, nonexistent years.
Tonight, I'll shut my eyes beneath the moon,
the crocodiles too late for shedding tears.
Spare pillows under sheets for alibis,
with every step, my shadow disappears
and every guarded gate becomes a path.
Adventures that were theirs will soon be mine.
Perhaps I'll find the entrance to a cave
or sense a fleeting shape so long declined.
If I should hear the snapping of a branch,
I may look up, I'll never look behind.

 

They told me of a creature I should meet
in long remembered rhymes from tattered books,
the hopeless, searching eyes and loping gait,
the twisted heart, the arms that end in hooks.
They told me of the one from which it hides.
Those rhymes, how many prisoners they took.
The forest looms before me as I walk,
I watch the sunlight struggle through the shade.
The hoofsteps are approaching all around,
a muffled screech resounds, begins to fade.
I never want to do as I am told;
that's not the way romantic tales are made.

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Bio:

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Lawrence Moore has been writing poems - some silly, some serious - since childhood. He lives in Portsmouth, England with his husband Matt and nine mostly well behaved cats. He has poetry published at, among others, Sarasvati, Pink Plastic House, Fevers of the Mind and The Madrigal. His first collection, Aerial Sweetshop, was published by Alien Buddha Press in January. @LawrenceMooreUK