By Garry Abbott

 

I doodled in profile,

Heads with taps leaking into pools

with stick men leaping, bathing and

waving from the mind stuff waters.

 

In margins and backs

of books for learning,

and later for working,

taking notes of notes of minutes of nothing.

I needed something to do.

 

Always taps and wheels,

from necks with no torso,

free to roam, but carbon static.

Stuck behind the lines of the page.

 

Perhaps it was the pressure

that needed letting?

Between skin and skull, swelling,

scalp and mind.

Under eyelids welling.

 

I doodled in profile.

Taps in the back of heads.

Leaking out mind stuff.

Floating still on the page.

 

And then I closed the book,

and just got on with it.