Everything is normal but for normality By Dennis Moriarty

Look. Here is the core of all you choose

to ignore. The inner city

of this global sprawl where the roads flow

like needle tracks down the arms

of a junkie who has suffered

too many lows and not enough highs, where

the night spills it’s neon guts

over the pavements, in the gutters and over

the water of a river

that cuts this place in two with the serrated edge

of a tidal knife. Look closer.

See the lunatic trembling for the want of a bed

in the asylum, at the homeless

who occupy the streets, shop doorways opulent

apartments furnished with cardboard

and the discarded rags of another man’s demise.

Look below your feet and see

into the bowls of this city where the day people

scream for lack of sleep

and the night people move restless as the wind

that howls and blows

through the alleyways and up to the gates of hell.

Look. Here you are now

in leafy suburban England where everything

is normal but for normality,

where the lunatic, the junkie and the dispossessed

are the chorus of a song

you never play, a line in a poem you refuse to read.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.

In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.