Jackals and Worms

Faceless, names long-forgotten

sour mendicants, trolls and crones

watch and wait, and

doze around the dying embers

of their camouflaged anonymity.

Sleep eludes them, and with

their crippled self-belief

flapping in the winds of battles lost,

they, cursing, spit foul bile

that sizzles briefly on hot stones.

*

© Graham Sherwood 09/2019