You and I have no right to be comfortable

You and I should feel no comfort

While one widow hungers

Not one of us should fuss to seek for comfortable leisure

Nor itch to get a raw distended pleasure

Nor even touring fuzzily a speculative mind

Rest contemplating “seems”

*

And though I sing The Lord’s Song and make prayers pillows

Though you can swing a cat remaining well-possessed, no hesitating

And we do so indeed

Spare mention, tell me only: what is this comfort still?

And then: Who is my neighbour?

*

Mind-set in black-box avoids a life on adverse-camber

A low compassion sinks

And eases into jollity

As pleases me I post and go on down to Jericho

As happy as a cat I am to be a friendly fellow

My route a daydream of a wrong pursual

No increase gets, but gain

*

Here on a pincer hunched there squats a ne’er-do-well

A grimacing sack sitting

Fat fingers picking as if flicking bits at air

His random life a takeaway

Tossed from a passing entourage upon a carriageway

An encounter of the times:

Like me; like you

We all just muddle-through

*

Not moved by much, by wretchedness of others

Wrapped up and comforted in little troubles

Contented suffering common appointed irritations

To warm ourselves and hold them

Our focal points they drive out best-addressed intentions

The world surrounding keeping going round and round

*

Our egos walk on by and by, and never slip or slither

Past sorties near our home

Sidestep oncoming kerbs, defecting from the next dilemma

Comfort is scarce a deep mere; and a house-resource depleted

Cast by the earth, declare your card: lowest denominator

Go whistle; stop and watch a floating breeze

*

Comfort ye – wear dodgeball hats wedged-down

Comfortingly forgetful, as if were of memory-foam

Fire-retardant closing out too nascent bombs,

And asphyxiates your tears

*

Fringed understandings comfort, are a tunnel in the dark

By which we enter

A shelter from the bruise of pain and desolation

A symptom in the brain

An answering to a rain of sleeping fevers

Like mountaineers hold life between and assurance and destruction

*

We reach for buttercups come up, the daisies flouncing

Show-makers of the spring

Replay all reminiscence back at every interim

Pretending everything

Our local cynosures are past-the-sell-by boasts,

Gladdeningly enjoin us

Unshaken our procrastinations, genuine enough

Who walk out a new pin, displaying handsome wardrobes

*

Puffed-up still-slaying death hangs lingering, fingering,

Our trove set couchant comfortable

The task, the road, goes relatively metalled

Highways traverse unsettled

Our ways exchange our lumber for closed arguments

Wool pushes over eyes, lies ambulating:

We do not know ourselves mainly for comfort.