The Trouble with My Enemy by James Walton

His heart inside a large vegemite jar

held dark viscous in state

salty as a collection basin

Those omnibus tears

rattle against the label

if I turn the screw top clockwise

Only a little, only a little at a time

There breaks a sound

a keen of parent reading a story book

an outlet release of infant hands

Then circles alphabets borderless

frayed and shredding pointers

passwords un entire

Only this morning, only for a while

I could not remember breakfast

and left the supermarket unpaying

the staff were kind

But there’s the sun half in the Indian Ocean

a wild west decline in a fire alight

toddler arms and sobbing at my neck

As though the grazed knees might never heal

An anti-turn, and anti-click slow ambience of return

the fuzz of jack in the box memory

caught between the edges hauls out its tongue

Every thing and not a thing

sticking exiting gravel 

all placed in set and beaking about underneath

Gliding unready, gliding unready out of swan song

James Walton is published in many anthologies, newspapers, and journals. He is the author of three collections, 'The Leviathan's Apprentice', 'Walking Through Fences', and 'Unstill Mosaics'.