A Poem a Day (735): 4 poems from a rock pub in Brussels

 
Mannekin
 
Into the cave,
bricked up, forbidden love.
Wooden tabletops compare sunken contrasts,
muted lights flicker in cloudy glasses
awaiting the big turn-off.
 
We measure streets on maps in streets.
A man carries half a mannekin,
his missing bits strutting their stuff,
held aloft in a real man’s hands.
It raises a smile in the slinking day.
Half a man being better than none.
 
I go the whole yard on a butter croissant,
flip it with tucked-in cheese, au fromage,
rediscover mellow sweet Home Alabama
cos it never went out of fashion.
 
Checkerboard tables invite your knight to play,
so bring your sword and magic helmet
Bugs Bunny style, shooting his carrot guns,
flipping the guys on the football table.
He scores without even trying.
Jambe-de-Bois someone called,
rousing cheers from blocked-up ears.
 
Circle back, confound the crowd,
trace backstreets to your starting post,
scribble poems in an Irish well-easy
in a high corner on a round table.
 
Red Hot Chillis take a turn on the box,
‘like nothing I have ever seen,
waiting for you’ – an invisible skin.
They take a chance you might never run.
 
Flip the switch and it’s night-time leaving,
wondering how much time you have left
while the light flickers in your hollow glass,
music caressing an empty room.
 
There is a reason to smile at something new,
delight in the potential,
the unexpected corner untaken.
There is no time, yet there is always time.
You can sit and think and dream a while,
remember every moment taken,
every chance you didn’t walk on by.
 
 

Slink
 
Strip
the light,
embrace dark,
raw, how it curves,
how it slinks,
the way it holds you,
this swallow whole
into yourself,
inside who you are.
Outside comes in.
Welcome the full,
this opening
beyond you.
Feel the rise.
It is the ocean,
deep.
 
 

Reflow
 
Oceans of stone,
feel the ridge, a stolen pause,
unreal, discarded, unwieldy,
where coral ceases to speak.
This underworld on pause,
bereft of flow,
simply pauses,
waits for reinvention,
for seeds to grow
and become what the oceans
are starving for.
 

 
Feel
 
I don’t feel.
I overfill.
Can you feel it?
Have you had a moment
where you pour over,
where you are more?
You find your thing
to find yourself.
We go out of our way to search,
but it might be here all along,
in your hand, in your heart,
in your eyes.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 4, 2025