fate – Cajun Mutt Press

Death’s Not So Bad

Death passed me by
and gave me a nod,
a knowing nod;
you know the kind. Or maybe you don’t.

He was with Fate.
Out on the randan
no doubt. Of course
Fate blanked me but then we have history.

I nodded back
as you do and
didn’t look back
not even when I heard the cough behind me.

The tap on the shoulder
was harder to ignore.
“Excuse me,” he intoned,
in a voice best described as rich and chocolaty,

“I believe you dropped your wallet.”

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer and has been published sporadically for the last fifty years if you count the school magazine, and why wouldn’t you? He has poems scheduled to appear in forthcoming editions of Literary Cocktail Magazine, Poetry Scotland, Dreich, Dogwood Alchemy and Live Nude Poems. He lives in Cumbernauld with his wife and next door’s cat.

Foreboding

I had been waiting for ages
under a stuttering streetlight,
when a figure emerged
from the shadows and said,
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m not sure but I feel I have to.”
“Are you expecting someone, then?”
“Well, yes. Or maybe some thing.
The longer I wait, the more anxious
it makes me. It’s extremely unnerving.
Does everybody react like this?”
“Some do, but as far as I know
most don’t bother to think about it.”
“I keep looking over my shoulder,
which makes me even more uneasy.
I have such a sense of foreboding…”
“Relax. It seems like your wait is over.
Let’s walk to the end of the road.”
“So, you were the one I was waiting for.”
“Now that it’s dawned on you,
it’s too late. Your fate is sealed.”

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. His writing has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, Pure Slush, and Otherwise Engaged Literary Journal as well as online at Loch Raven Review, London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, Retreats from Oblivion, and Home Planet News. He has published a collection, Afterthoughts, reviewed here:
https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/06/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson/

Tag: fate

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 12/04/23

Death’s Not So Bad

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/20/23

Foreboding