You Are My Only Witness – 8th March 2025

This braided poem was assembled after reading a couple of posts at Sonia Dogra’s blog, borrowing the first line and then weaving together the lyrics from Nomeansno’s ‘It’s Catching Up’, with an imagined meeting with an old friend both now and in the past.
Also shared with Poetic Adventures

We bring with us the weight of others
Living rent-free in our heads

– Have you heard the news?
– The dead walk

We’ll meet in my room again

How to disconnect from the connected?

A sweet, dusty smell of cigarette ash
A comfortable haze, a bitter beer taste

– Do you hear that sound?
– Like fingers scratching underground

We’ll drive our parents crazy

The burdens of reality are distraction
Voices wild and unnerving

– Do you hear that sound?
– That slamming door

Put on another record to soothe the pain

My only friend, history made us enemies
It only felt like forever

– I’ve fought it all my life
– I can’t fight it anymore

We carry a deep nostalgia for last week

Here again, drawn to that sound
Everything changed, and nothing too

– It’s catching up

Listen to another record, this time alone

The same thought overwhelms us

– How do you hide from something you have
found?