seven days; two of relieved pressure
and five with each sense inundated
but that’s normal, I gather.

at quarter to nine, untimely to my ears,
the bell rings - an alarm that only agitation hears -
and I’d do anything just to become unfeeling.

an empty classroom; a seating plan with no direction;
to my name there is a slight tremor, fidgeting to distraction
with a brain that has no intention of hearing.

I awoke with a need,
with presentiments from bad dreams;
detached from feeling, I hear it sing:
a grandfather’s clock, untimely,
boxes and a piano with no tuning.

a walk through high hills and chalk walls,
towards a fervid green memory -
no ash to see and no burnt bodies.

now, with this perturbed heartbeat,

the     ghosts and    
goners      will  
meet

tomorrow will be sunday just like i wanted,
but something feels different,

a walk through the woods, a roast dinner and rice pudding,
jam so sweet and seconds if I want it,
the warmth of someone who wants me
but the cold grips,

board games before school begins,
before the world comes to get me,

the sun looks so weary as my bedtime beckons,
one more story please, so I can remember it
‘cause I know this’ll be it for me.

one more story, holding your hand as I'm lost in fantasy.

Still Fighting It
- No Surprises
- Motion Picture Soundtrack
- Mad World
- Pyramid Song
- Mr. Blue Sky
- 4 Minute Warning
- Daydreaming
- Right Where It Belongs
- Something I Can Never Have
- The Day The World Went Away
- One More Light
- I Giorni

a child asks for sympathy,
whether it’ll be okay.
repeating a sacred lie, we don’t know why;  once and again, until we grow -
until we’re taken someplace we’ll know.

here we lay, strings left in disarray as another puppet cast away;
constantly cold and the words stained,
a tool to never find its place.

intervals with irregular timing,
disquieting; I’m lost in imagining,
happy to be agitated but still, we despise it.

church bells that cruelly silence;
appliances and cold reminders,
our head’s filled with needles and thread.

a virtual walk in the real world,
we corrode as the people grow old;
we see the sky as we never could, now.

a stranger wears my face, but with less decay;
in the distance, hidden in the summer’s maize
I see an imposter that answers to my name,
and in rapture he watches as the yellow rots away.
A decade ago, I recall the same.

in the distance, a stranger who seems closer today -
idly, I wonder why I’m walking his way.