Rag Helmets

It arrives early each morning
freshly pressed on you doorstep,
which needs repainting.
- Unfold it
- Hook your hair behind your ears
- Slide it past your eyes
- Slot your smile below, stretched tight from left to right.
Teeth straight and uniform
You are happy.
That's what it says.

Your newspaper helmet becomes light,
as you ingest the words
on your journey to work, the school run etc.
They slide down your gullet,
graffitiing themselves on the walls of your stomach,
stamping the tracks of your intestine.
Absorbed.
Coursing bold and loud through the rivers of your being.
Inky deposits crowding the fibres of your mind,
slipping between skull and brain matter.

No longer do you see the shadows of sunlight,
which lick the fields in hues of gold and green.
Muted are the bumble bees that dance between the gemmed heads of buttercup and wild daisy.

Ignored are those whose newspaper crowns sag and crumple,
the ink trickling and pooling into forced facial dimples,
dribbling into the starved divots of exposed clavicles.

Rag Helmets

You don't see them sink to their knees
scrabbling for sight and direction
cradling their newspaper shields for comfort.

You won't mourn them
laid out in their caskets of headlines
lowered into the graves
the editorial team dug.