Waiting For The Bad Boy (Poetry)

I hear you most days — a long, long way off —
kicking stones across some empty street —
the ricochet of flint on kerb and brick
echoing wall to pockmarked wall.

You dawdle in your coming — habit wears
                                a sneer
at punctuality — an unvoiced couldn’t-care attempt
to turn loitering on bad-part-of-town corners
into some significant event.

Late to the party — I anticipate
you won’t be truly welcome anywhere —
everyone’s been warned... Yet still I find I wait
imagining your progress — sullen — slow —

remorseless as a wave that gathers up
a weight of flotsam — drags it all in tow
as sidekick to its energy — that footloose gang
of nameless objects — broken — bobbing useless
                                in your wake.

Someday you will arrive — uninvited — barge
all obstacles aside — nothing stops
the inevitable however stout and good the door
your twisted key fits all — undoes the wisest — unclicks
                                the fanciest of locks.