Want

You can want something too much—
ache as time drags past empty-handed,
eyes turned away.

Hear elephant feet pace rooms, kick
at cortex doors, unanswered. News
that never arrives, feeds gut lava.
Need that seeps to sear nerve endings
like fibromyalgia. Its bile tarmacs
tongues, lets you taste wait.

The urgent piss of impatience. Fret—
deafening alarm at night, white noise
tinnitus by day; stifles birdsong, steals
perfume from fresh-cut flowers,
slowly takes over like a tumour.

Paul Waring is a clinical psychologist who once designed menswear and was a singer/songwriter in Liverpool bands. Paul is a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee whose poems have appeared in Eunoia Review, Prole, High Window, Strix, Atrium, Algebra of Owls, Amaryllis, Clear Poetry, The Ofi Press Magazine and many others. His website: https://waringwords.wordpress.com.