Paul J. L. Hughes

Paul J. L. Hughes is a breakthrough English poet. He writes about alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness and religious transformation. His work has already featured or is forthcoming in more than a dozen publications, including Words of the Lamb Magazine, Spirit Fire Review, Chariot Press Journal, Asylum Magazine and The Poetry Lighthouse. He shares more of his writing at instagram.com/prosebypaul.

Easy read of the poem in the image above:

The poem in the image is written so that the lines form the shape of an hourglass.

The Final Grains of the Hourglass

Your days are numbered, Paul, if you carry on drinking like this

You will be dead within six months, the pale white-coated

Executioner informs me, your time is running out,

If you don’t act now, it is game over,

Lost in a maze of panic,

Feverish and

Flushed,

I sit

And stew,

For hours upon

Hours, until it becomes

Clear: there is only one thing to

Calm my frazzled nerves at a time like this,

I fill my glass and hold it to my bloated face, and sail

Out to sea, to an island where the future is surplus to requirements