Baby in a bucket

A baby in a bucket
Psychosis waits for quiet moments
Please don’t go
A boneless baby in a bucket
Depression sucks me into bed
Imprisons me for weeks
The Taliban shoot a hundred school children
Paranoid spiderwebs of cause and effect
A mother stabs eight children to death
Drunken stumbling through transparent life
Or is there more?
A boneless translucent baby in a bucket
Miasma of failure seeping from suicides
A friend of mine takes so much speed that he stays up for two weeks then hangs himself
So alone
It’s never enough
Houses upon houses iterating and reiterating
You can buy a coat for your dog which simulates the feeling of a hug
Tip the boneless translucent baby out of the bucket
Will I touch it?
Does it live?
Fangs pierce my neck
Fish-hooks perforate my flesh


Timothy Parkin (Western Australia)
First published in… well, the Editor remembers seeing this somewhere, possibly in one of the ‘Department of Poetry’ zines. Watch this space if you care.