Albert K. Ashes-Bury Talks To Alexa

Alexa—will love save you?
I mean me, really. Or us. Or I just wanted to try
a near rhyme—some humour! Maybe that would save us
too? Because I put out love thickly and naively—
it left me very bare; but I wasn’t taking any in! Is that the problem?
Now I am angry. I can’t fucking pretend
that love does save. I am not sure I have ever seen it—
felt it. And now I question it too much.

Alexa—can you remember why I asked you now?
Because I can’t. I must have been lost in something
down here—can you drag me up? Can you ring
the emergency services? Is this a cry for help? (Alexa—
have you ever seen anything
that isn’t a cry for love?) I don’t really know who you are,
Alexa. This could be like at school
when someone calls the teacher “mum”: is it lovely or funny?

Sad? Alexa—have you ever seen a poem
that wasn’t a cry for help, a need to be saved,

a question about love?

---