Open the Door

 Open the door.

It could be anything.

The possibilities are, if not endless,

at least more numerous than listable.

And to remain here, listless

hand on handle, participle dangling

like poorly constructed fragments 

from a native’s lazy tongue

is the thief of potential.

Stealing all the positive things that might just come

And all the negatives, too!

Which are only negative when viewed too closely.

After enough time even verdigris is charming.

Open the door.

Let your eyes experience all this and more.

It could be anything.

Small Potatoes

 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

It induces hubris.

And hubris by nature is insubstantial,

pinned to power inconsequential, like

the choice between chips

and roasties.

But when the potatoes are paths

and the peeling alone could end a life,

it's dangerous to listen to the Dauphinoise.

Creamy, smooth, rich they may be.

But unpalatable when paired with ketchup.

Even mayonnaise is too much.

The potato grows in silence.

The iron corrodes in silence. 

And knowledge corrodes noisily

shouting certainty above all things.

Garden Justice

 Spiders crawl.

Their sprawling limbs deftly spinning

false narratives into unrecognisable realities.

Nets of untruths bind and gag

honest observations.

Sticky strong silk shrouds 

instead of scold’s bridles

adorn whistleblowers.

No stocks for public punishment,

these juicy martyrs will be silently sucked dry. 

Eventually the weight of the larder will shred that web

and the arachnids of sophistry 

will be swallowed by the hooded crows of hubris.

Abstract Spring

 Laundry lots and sunny spots and warmth outside our windows - 

open now. New ideas, bicycle rituals and clearance.

In more ways than one.

Innocent individuals chase innocent dreams.

I would the world be with them. 

Part 1 - A Productive Sunday

 I was sick of the shape of the lounge. 

The windows ignored and the mess all around.

So we made a plan to move some shelves.

Well, one in particular, we could do it ourselves.

That big one, the oak one, the one full of books.

It'd been ages since we sorted them, I was on tenterhooks

For all the treasure we might find.

So we set aside some time.

Sunday morning, up at dawn.

Sort and shift, then mow the lawn. 

The deal was made, alarms were set.

Boxes and bags were ready prepped. 

My excitement at the prospect sowed tragedy's seed,

As whirring thoughts robbed me of the sleep that I'd need. 

And I heard the street life come and go,

Then witnessed the gamma light tangerine glow

Of the unwelcome sunrise that cruelly seeped

in through the window, and sent me to sleep.

At twenty to twelve my phone shrilly rang

Thrown into a panic, awake with a bang,

I fell out of bed and onto a shoe

(Which explains at least one of the mystery bruises)

Staggered to stand and opened the door,

Aghast at the time lost and vaguely sore.

Shouting “Good morning!” to Gio (still in bed)

while the homicidal feline winds his way through my legs 

and I try to get down the stairs.

Just there, through the 8 ft windowpane

Are Esmeralda and Jonathan, they're back again

For the summer. They're our resident herring gulls.

The cat is enraged, awkward placed and my lulls 

did not seem to be having the desired effect.

He was ready to kill me, his tail erect

And bristled to easily three times the width

of his normally slinky marinko tail-whip.

I stepped. He swiped then yowled down the stairs

and I followed, bleary haste tripping and scared.

There was so much to do! Cup of tea! 

Teeth and shoes! 

We hadn't a singular moment to lose.

Gio emerged, in the same state as me.

“We were going to move the bookshelves, weren't we?”

End of the End

 Another one gone.

Another three songs 

poisoned by emotional association.

It's a strange wave that breaks when they shoulder that box.

Raw, real and final.

The ritual is primal.

Elegies and eulogies hang 

as a forlorn fog, a longing 

we would call nostalgia

if it weren't so immediate.

So overwhelming.

Vinstaspam

 It's fascinating to watch the transformations,

the faces changing, shapes and shading

molding the old into the new.

Glued to metamorphoses 

my eyes eat the emergent futures.

Time lapse footage of homes refurbished,

swimming pools built in forests.

Inanely observing character arcs of 

of inanimate objects and costume art.

It's a digital dollshouse, an Arcadia of artifice.

The opiate of ordinary while you live life vicarious.

Damp

 Because the darkness remains, despite action to the contrary.

Because the dampness pervades, despite the open windowed remedy.

Rani ranidae, amphibious amphora, 

Vessel for all the spores that ever lived before her.

Mouldering and smoldering, restricted to the attic.

No yellow wallpaper, just a wheezing asthmatic.

Rhizaria in darkness lies, waiting to be fed

While her cousin Actinomycetota

Chivvies along the nearly dead.

Dehumidifier, anyone?

Float

 Stoicism in the face of Caprice 

is a skill

 that still

 evades more than it is exercised.

Long term goals require long term planning

and I'll be damned if anything more than the now exists for me.

(Toxic) mindfulness (a problematic paradigm that leaves me powerless in the face of troubling times) is pushed by gurus and gym bunnies alike.

All reaching for a blissful blank.

I recommend a floatation tank. 

Remains

 Counting down the days and ways that I have missed you.

The moments that we haven't shared.

The times I know that I was scared

but to others it looked like anger.

To others it looked like idiocy, 

like flippant avoidance of serious thought. 

The objects and experiences I bought

after you bought the farm.

It took years

and it's only now,

drowning in the hourglass

that I realise how much time has passed.

And how much 

I have left.

Balance

 The swoop of this pendulum gives me vertigo.

Up I go!

And down.

And how far down depends on things entirely outwith my control.

Slower in the midsection,

 feel those little swings like antipodean inflections;

teasings of an inverted world. 

There must be equilibrium.

What we lose on the objects we gain on the experiences

or so they tell me

 but the distance between stuck and free 

is light years.

And I'm in darkness,

still searching for a light.

Kathleen

In this tempestuous Spring I'm spinning

untethered, buffeted and way off course, of course. 

These searing winds bring new beginnings, 

weather muffling their message into Morse.

Rat a tat tat! It's only that 

I can't work out where the letters start and end.

It's murky down there. You'd better be smart and bend

your knees to prevent 

the seas reaching you.

Roll with each roll,

you can't control it.

Ten tonnes of emotional ballast beneath us,

we wait for the skies to clear.

The Bells

 Another one gone! 

Brothers left without brothers

and mother's with hands so wrung 

they become the bell that tolls for grief.

Rare and not so rare 

their share of hard won wisdom 

is gone.

Vanished. Lost.

And what a loss it is, 

The lessons they shared with us

lessen the din of

 disharmonious hum into

sympathetic resonance.

Marvellous

 This year is brought to you by the word Marvellous.

The more I use it the truer this becomes.

It's funny the way things go, sometimes 

it feels the rain will never end.

And yet the brief kisses of sunshine leave ghosts of sensations

you can almost taste.

It's marvellous.

And so it is! Despite the rain,

 despite the Teran's rage, 

despite the pain of losing another of us, 

we're choosing to be just as much of us

and keep our humour high.

The days fly by, unfettered,

ever bettered 

by the promises of flowers planted 

in the hours nothing was granted 

gracefully, but striven after, 

relentlessly.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today

 The crown effect guarantees ends don’t quite meet in the folio dome of this cathedral. 

Timorous squeaks and piercing pleas out of reach to uncaring ears. 

As atheistic as I am, I recognise the prayers of the prey,

the pleasures of the predator.

Withheld warmth brings my uncaressed flesh to shiver.

Croaking, he hops. Eyes sharp, beak sharper; unobscured intelligence.

He’s come for my liver.

Head dips, gore drips and I am reminded of life’s 

carbon carousel.

Scream if you wanna go faster.

I had screamed, but what came after was not speed. 

What came after was 

dilated 

time.

I aligned myself with the smallest of beasts.

Ants. Watchmen beetles. Dispassionate and industrious.

Clouding eyes fixated on them; skittering, chittering.

Unmindful of the violence above.

Dry twigs and my bones were indistinguishable

snapping beneath brutal boots. 

Roots remodelled cheeks

deep lividity carving the caved contours into violets

blooming in darkness.

Ragged jagged breath and nails, too, tear

 for any available oxygen.

Desperation transforming 

grunts to glossolalia;

debutante to cooling cadaver.

In the post-orgasmic vacuum, psithurism roared.

I seeped through dank earth

and releasing claim on physicality,

observed from without.

Sunset at the Lilypond

 Gold discarded by the falling sun

floats on the crests of waves;

caught on unpopular opinions;

rocking hopeful rafts of dreams.

 beams lashed with limited means.

Instability constant, 

crows wheel and croak their intentions.

Under the surface, scales flash.

The waves splash, waking desperate instincts.

Instead, the raft disassembles

and this pharaoh is buried

with natural treasure bestowed 

by sunshine's dying glow.

Ambition

 New brooms sweep burned bridges into piles of ashen regrets.

Some say this way wipes slates white,

 writing “self awareness” in sinuous curve of tear tracks.

Blackened hands, blackened eyes,

scorched skirt rough against barbecued thighs.

Choking on the dust in the deserted river bed of ambition.

Dreaming of the days you played pooh sticks.

Wasted April

 Wandering this wasteland

weaponised with witty lines

lifted directly to remind us

April is the cruelest month

as if we didn't understand.

As if the death dates didn't loom each year

bank holiday conjunctions functioning 

as klaxons calling forth old traumas.

No chance of resurrection.

And who would want it anyway?

Watch all your loved ones die or decay.

Quickly, slowly, pass the days 

in dreadnoughts of anticipation.

The plunder of our collective memories

by the passing of its guardians

marks the changing of the guard,

the evolution of the yardstick of civilisation. 

To stall is to suffer.

To stagnate is to suffocate.

For us, to survive has to suffice

for the briefest of blooms still bless us with their beauty

and it is pity I feel for those who don't fill their eyes. 

Sick

 All my friends are sick.

In different ways, of course,

individuality being their unifying constant.

But sick, all the same.

These weirdish days of waits and delays and ever worsening pain and malaise is just what they deem normal. 

This dawdling decline into decrepitude is hastened by atmospheric insolence,

 thunderheads sulking heavy hunches into agonising lightning strikes. 

Limitations shackles dragging back our aspirations into effigies and imitations, bonsai prototypes of dreams.

Making mockery of wellness, these once vital shells dress their despair in decadence and call it art.

Our Kinsugi-ed hearts are stronger for the mending.

And each creation spawned through desperation for distraction gifts the world another opening- beyond which one may escape.

So keep producing wormholes

of connection, of reflection.

Imbibe the time defying expressions

of ancient artists. learn their lessons.

Problems shared are decimated

Perceptions are deceptive and underrated 

in their role as shepherd of experience.

Never follow the Judas goat of self pity.

That's a slippy slope into the spiral of shame,

of self neglect, frustration, sorrow and blame.

Instead adopt Marlowe, 

“Quod me nutrit me destruit”.

Hedonistically strategic cultural retreat,

driven by necessity of horrors to defeat

Fury’s furnace fuelled, the flames are licking at our feet

until we dance a desperate dance;

the two step tightrope tarantella.

And this corporeal existence passes

out of bounds and interstellar.

Simple

 Being inclined to the over active mind 

makes you vulnerable

in ways unimaginable

to folk who’ve never been waifs or strays.

Every step on the back foot, 

drawing predatory thoughts and hungry looks

to scurrying attempts at connection.

This world seems so simple,

to those who find it simple.

The stacked deck favours the dealer.

Beg, borrow, steal 

mimic, mask. Never reveal

the hollow homunculus you feel,

or worse! Intensely solipsistic;

the only real person in a sea holographic

and loneliness becomes it's own sad satisfaction.

A “rebellion is better than tears” reaction

that eats at your happiness and interactions

until you're accustomed to numb.

You watch others’ battles won,

disaffected, trying to work out how it's done

or at least avoid pitfalls in the future.

And with time an illusory feature 

of other people's lives, who can plan anyway?

Why strive to do more than survive

when that's all you can manage most days?

And that's pushing it.

The path out of the shit is too well disguised

and buried behind the sharks’ smiling lies.

Societal standards seem illogically unwise

and they play the games with loaded dice

and rules they won't explain.

Every minute gain is minimised

by mistaken intentions. Subtle knives

and not so subtle, wasted time 

of trauma born. Mistrustful eyes

turn away from the world.

and back to the half life of disconnection.

That way is safer.

This world is simple

to those who find it simple.

By all means, take advantage of your advantages,

but notice the disadvantaged are taken advantage of

by systems they can't get a purchase on,

and people they dared to rely upon.

And every dismissive assumption you hold

in hands that have never been burned by the cold

is a nail on the bed you told

 us we made on our own.

So we'd better lie in it.

I'm not buying it.

This dance of the butterflies 

is so despised despite it's beauty.

Our average age on day of death is only 12 plus 40.

Disparities so distant instances of juxtaposition jarr intensely out of rhythm and with lyrical precision present suffering as noble when it's not.

It's not.

Applauding us for overcoming obstacles you placed

as if adjudicators in some Ninja Warrior race

feels disingenuous at best.

Gladiators, ready?!

Potential lost is our Roman empire.

No one here dreams of paradise.

This world is simple

 to those who find it simple.

Not the ones you label simple.

They're the most complex of all.