The sensory garden has gone
full Monument Valley tonight.

A skyline to fathom what just happened,
fathom guilt – in the car park, mind.

To fathom endings – even though it wasn’t.
That last look – when it isn’t.

Backing out of the day room, nice and smooth 
to car park order; under butane blue

skies fading down to the full butterfat.
Sunday League muddied with cloud skid –

cumuli as messengers, conveying 
what I had seen and not heard. You;

sullen shadow, surrounded but alone
in the room of stretched emotions.

Protestations for patch repair, 
and your other shitehawk words 

left to the air; waiting for the clement
the caring to give them credence

and yet, I am outside
beneath Monument Valley tonight.

Joseph Long lives and works on the Medway as a father and Engineer, writing poetry between shifts. He has a passion for works which reflect working class life & culture and his main influences are John Cooper Clarke, Christopher Reid, John Burnside, Seamus Heaney, Ian Hamilton & Douglas Dunn. Joseph has been published by Stand, The Dawntreader (Indigo Dreams), Blackbox Manifold, Snakeskin Poetry, Littoral and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Poetry in 2025.