His obsessions could drive you mad,
they make you feel useful and strong
in the mid-November, warm, low sun,
ants, flies, mosquitoes thrive.

Your obsessions are heavy loads
things you believe to be the truth –
absolute, implacable, unavoidable –
while he keeps on mooning all day.

He feels useless, hollow and cold,
except when he decorated her flat:
pinning your father’s aquarelles
on the abhorrent clinical white walls.

Dizziness as you walked back home,
guts out, sickness, disgust, your eye blinked;
sharp glass debris, broken plastic,
as obsessive as the western wind.