Jim’s Death

By Dale Booton
Winter 2020 | Poetry

For Christopher Isherwood

if I sit here and cry let me be

it is needed for the soul can carry

only so much before it breaks the shelving

it has been stacked upon and falls shattering

upon the ground the way the tears shed

by history fill the oceans to the brink of collapse

because it is natural to feel as if a small part

of life is over forever lost that there is

nothing more one can do than mourn

bring in all the books I read as a child

and pile them up high so that I may

feel the years collect around me like water

spilling in flowing crystal clear and promising

a return to the cleanliness to the purity

I always wanted but was always unable to gain

I will lap at it as though it is a rich wine

and recount the tales of the times I adored

gulping until I drown amongst the paper harvest

Dale Booton is a twenty-five-year old queer poet from Birmingham. His poetry has been published by Verve in their Diversity anthology, Untitled: Voices, Re-Side, and The Poetry Society. Most recently, his poem 'Exposure, Part II', won 2nd Prize in the Young Poet Network's August Challenge #1.

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