Les Wicks
There was so much music about,
I couldn’t get your songs, my own
were a chaos. We carefully
didn’t throw in everything.
You were the first woman to live with me
(though it was initially in a tent).
We had no money & my health was a mess.
One day on acid three crows landed on my belly.
Did I know you? Who was I?
There was a hope that
hippie Marxists would never go out of fashion.
We had a selfish & passive pacifism, were just so
afraid there was a god
as we meditated in a bored fervour.
I think there were some solutions
but so many helpless questions.
In a cloud of art school
you cried occasionally.
The dole-roses fluttered towards our mattress
on the scrounged milk crates base.
We were the ideal couple of ideas
in a time when nothing made sense (1976).
The next year only got worse,
kept it so polite
as we splintered.
Les Wicks Over 40 years Wicks has performed widely across the globe. Published in over 350 different magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 28 countries in 15 languages. Conducts workshops & runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river. His 14th book of poetry is Belief (Flying Islands, 2019).
