Art: Portal 26 by Ken Collins
ANOTHER SHADE OF GRAY
He hoped to hush the shrill, replace the clarion,
the cock’s determined call more appealing, bound
to raise a laugh, not to mention a couple of ghosts
down the pub. Cacophony, Euphony, and he
the moping owl, central in this self-suggested menage
de trois, near the lower branches of insanity, but far
from the maddening, stress-extended, wakey-
wakey y’all, shrieked matrimonial alarm.
His response more drowsy than tinkling, the mute,
inglorious Milton infected by the hubbub of home
and factory mass production, machination, the clatter
of plates, earphone wires vacuumed up. He too
could be found wrapped round a barrel, en route
to internal malfunction, in a narrow cell forever laid –
if only to know the spice of leaves, the whispering,
before his one small gate of mercy clanged shut.