Paul Brookes’ ‘We Wait for Sick Sunblaze to’ is an ode to darkness – and a critique of light in comparison – which manages to transcend the usual tawdry and overtly-gothic glorifications that poets often sink into. Brookes speaks of darkness in a way that makes the reader feel as though it were usurped; deposed and bereft of the credit it deserves – for life and love’s intensity are born from dark rooms; where light brings pain, age and death.
The last third of this poem is particularly poignant, I feel; when Brookes’ Copernican revolution of the light/dark dichotomy takes a turn for the theological that could be taken as either highly blasphemous, or a profoundly pious and honest form of doxology…
Let us know what you think below!
– The Bees Are Dead Triumvirate
Many thanks to the superb “The Bees Are Dead” for publishing my “We Wait For Sick Sunblaze To”
Paul Brookes was poetry performer with “Rats for Love” and his work included in “Rats for Love: The Book”, Bristol Broadsides, 1990. His first chapbook was “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley”, Dearne Community Arts, 1993. He has read his work on BBC Radio Bristol and had a creative writing workshop for sixth formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. 
The Wombwell Rainbow 