The cogs screech from the clock.
Calendar entries hit terminal velocity.
The mantelpiece cracks and decays.
Alive in lost living, dreaming life away.
The crude tally on the kitchen walls,
A barometer of missed encounters.
The whistle through the window
Which ripples through the curtain.
The tap of water from the sink
Makes me feel uncertain.
The world is utter chaos
Until you bring me peace.
The friction of a page turning
As you smile to yourself
Even the clock is unwinding
After a series of sudden judders
Each tick of the minute hand
Longer than the last.
One minute of stillness triumphs
A year of overwhelming noise.
The chrysalism of your company
Is worth a hundred years of thunder.
And through all this I anger fast
Because you leave me still.
Mar 8
Mar 8, 2026 at 10:04 AM UTC
I woke up on the sofa again
Dream-weight bearing past traumas
Looking ever backwards
Gauping at my own flaws.
I woke up on the sofa again,
Etchings of past misdemeanors
Losing purchase on the walls
And floating around the room.
I woke up in a frenzy
To remove the LED haze,
Whatever it was I was doing
Was now done yesterday.
I woke up delirious,
Not knowing who I was
For everything that I had been
Had now been repossessed.
It's a funny thing realising
That part of you is gone
Waking up on the sofa
With a need to hurry on.
I woke up on the sofa again
With a sense of worthlessness,
Reflecting on the regularity
Of my boundaries being crossed.
I woke up on the sofa again
And slowly trudged to bed
Like an extra in the background,
A dream that's died a death.
When I awoke I realised
The misdemeanors were lesser,
I wondered through the streets
And saw not one single transgressor.
I stopped a couple in the store
Who talked about their summer,
And saw a woman with her dog
Admiring a passing runner.
As the polyester jackets floated past
And shoes scuffed the fallen canopy,
I saw that movement made people happy,
That the sofa was no place for me.
Sep 19, 2023
Sep 19, 2023 at 11:25 AM UTC
Separated by progress
We live in isolation
Socially stagnated
Growing ever distant.
Focus further inward
Without hesitation,
Cutting off future conflicts
Before they even happen.
Perspective and reality
No longer separate
Echo chamber catalysts
Shattered-faction fragment.
Elitist tactics brainwash
Entire populations,
Localised abundance withers
With dying vegetation.
Doomsday clocks lurching
Our salvation diverges
Shouting to the twilight sun
We share but false elation.
Entire regions' designated
Means of production
No new doctrines allowed
All hail consumption.
Ever directionless, at a loss
Regressing into violence:
Revolutionaries' proudest
Of our failed revolutions.
Living out our dreams
Of solitary bliss,
Live alone in harmony
Or die in the abyss.
What piece of work is man
That chooses inhumanity
A species in a chasm
Led by mere savages.
May 10, 2022
May 10, 2022 at 6:26 PM UTC
We fall in love with looks exchanged
Though some say it's not really love
We fall in love with peoples voices
Forgetting their other traits.
In every grey cityscape,
In every tired estate
Love triumphs quietly
Above decibels of hate.
In every steel Metropolis
Drowning in inequality,
Exists temporal understanding
Between wealth and poverty.
The weary travellers too,
Worn down by years of routine
Smile behind closed doors,
Raging with the chemical joy.
The eyes which glow back at us
Engulf us in molecular adoration,
Like fires catching from kindleling
Melting the rough corners of our day.
Life can make fools of all of us,
But to be fooled is to live.
No masterpiece was crafted
Without painful risk.
And how I came to know
Your glare was meant for mine?
The pains I feel from inequality
Become more secondary.
Just seconds of your laughter
Sweep years of cortisol away.
Overiding the purpose of my soul
For those profound moments of the day.
The joyous glowing of your eyes
Craft a neuro-masterpiece,
As equal measures of dopamine,
And oxytocin ignite my zelous glare.
That glowing behind your eyes
Tells me, it's your soul and mine.
That acceptance of ourselves as fools
In love, is the only escapism I need.
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 12:35 PM UTC
Black stone juts out over greying ice,
A mass of alpine greenery,
Half bare, half masked in white;
The motion of a turner painting,
Colours cast through Lowry's eyes.
Camouflaged upon a riverside
With no sign of Lutheran ambition,
As faith faltered, medieval to Christ,
A small church modestly mirages,
Casting simplicity into Nordic pride.
The excitement of the northern lights
Over the precipice of these continents,
American and Eurasian plates collide.
The Langjökull Glacier screams
Witnessing its own untimely demise.
The remoteness captured in the landscape
Starkly contrasts to us who bear witness to it
And in the mirroring of the landscape
A lonely civil dwelling knows nothing
Of war between nature and humankind.
Feb 17, 2020
Feb 17, 2020 at 7:36 AM UTC
Artificial city-dwellers
Discard all humanity
Carbon fired tin cans
Pierce the serenity.
Anonymous collisions
Fifty floors below
Each passer by a stranger
You will never know.
Pedestrians, travellers
And their vehicles
Droplets in a river,
Altering the tidal flow.
Irrigation passages
Absorb the elements
Hedge fund panellists,
Bankers and workers flee.
Eye rolling baby boomers
Sit, tutting one by one.
Nervous millennials adorned
In clothes for moths to eat.
Breaking point carriages
Century old tunnelling
A lone foot tapping
And quiet page turning.
Brakes hit the track
Piercing the murmur
Eighty jarred necks
External motion blur.
Sliding carriage doors
A not-so-subtle beep
Dust kicked from dawn
Falls onto the city streets.
Blue tower inhabitants
Busting out of the seams
Water molecules collide
But nothing sinks the fleet.
Smartly suited eye-darters
Push and pull for space
Rolling up the banks
Humanity erased again.
I settle on the brickwork
Until the storm retreats
Circadian commuters
Run to rest their feet.
A few lonely meanders remain
Wondering down the beach
Forlorn festivies fog over
Swinging shop-signs squeak.
As the lighting rig descends
And once blue ceiling stains
The beige brickwork turns red
The high tide admits defeat.
Pink light turns to navy blue
A faint moonbeam lights the sky
Obscured by one cloud then a few
Vague incandescence frames the scene.
The streetlights flicker overhead
One worn out passenger now leaves
Shrouded, cold, hungry and fulfilled;
Abandonment for some is peace.
May 30, 2019
May 30, 2019 at 12:34 PM UTC
As wires round the world get lighter and thinner
Your news scroll feeds you various homicides,
From desktops at noon to plasma at dinner,
The auto-cue scrolls through this week’s most viral.
The network fail to mention the other seven billion
Who kept living their life devoid of such sinning.
Disquiet on your perch, picture your pleasure:
Hopping alone, around your enclosure.
The window slides up, wind ruffles your feathers.
Beak to the bars, you're helplessly tethered.
Yell 'til you're heard, ’til you’re hoarse and unkempt,
Yell 'til the neighbours are mad and hell bent.
Step back to your pedestal, tapping your feet,
The rhythm you summon traverses the streets.
Nearby inhabitants sit watching their screens,
Warn-out, occupied, unfulfilling their dreams.
Tip-tap-a-tip-tap-a-tip-tap away the evening and next day.
Now you live vicariously through social media,
You cannot stop tweeting, lonelier… lonelier.
Connections you make get quicker and quicker.
‘Life is the greatest’ upon appearances,
You pick and you carve a residual image;
The best fools fool themselves into submission,
Post exponentially, build on your rhythm;
Second life, third face, prosodic yet speechless,
Your diary now echoes, empty and featureless.
Stare at your screen, silent and grinning;
Hive mind rewired, this story needs spinning.
Forget losing face, that farcical demeanour.
The needle wobbles on your false life fever,
As sunlight exposes where your cage is broken,
The tether is loose but you're past noticing.
Shared knowledge free of charge, constantly flowing,
Ignore others' viewpoints, or pleas to come in.
The glass in the window is brilliantly glowing,
There's fire outside that your posts have been stoking.
White noise, connection lost, you're no longer hosting
That multi-channel, fibre-optic, bandwidth expansion.
Untether your Ethernet, the cage disappears
Find sanctuary outdoors when quiet is near.
The caged bird tweets devoid of all reason,
Fooling itself about its own lack of freedom.
May 10, 2019
May 10, 2019 at 9:15 AM UTC
Much like a sestina repeats it's hook
Our lovers and idols, ever prophetic,
Sew meaning into quivering arcs.
Desaturating the still, all becomes clear
Unscramble the motion in the film
The cover image foregrounds.
Remove the chaos of every day
Plot points pinned to a story-line
We spin ourselves back in time.
As one song may last a lifetime
Churning the same harmony,
Of the few who never leave.
Worry changes no forking paths
So worry not and sonder still
Time clarifies, distilling all.
A viewpoint in the stratosphere
Changes the night sky forever
Yet, the seasons remain the same.
One prolonged glance into the sky
Listening to this primordial beat;
Here, true lovers, idols and myself
Glide through space eternally.
Apr 25, 2019
Apr 25, 2019 at 1:00 PM UTC
Second flop first fold, ***** face, benign.
Stale mist drips from the above air vent
Thump. Snap. Thump. Snap. Almost in time.
Acute tremble, double bluff, card corners bent.
Big blind, little deaf. Eyes on the road.
Tortoise to rabbit, calm calculation.
Slow motion bullet drop, auto reload.
Don't... let... the penny... drop.
Tilt back from your desk, indebted, subdued,
Four legs on the floor was always too safe,
Kick back, relax... tip ninety degrees
Clarity comes after a fall.
Oct 15, 2018
Oct 15, 2018 at 6:48 AM UTC
Strangers marvel as they pass
At the fire that never leaves
Yet barely any stop to look
Or rest their aching knees.
The furnace which you left alight
Still rages without witness;
A thousand feigned attempts to douse,
It burns on without forgiveness.
The fire burns brighter still
Flames cracking the furnace
Yet the fuel which burns brightest
Is often the easiest missed.
The fire rages, crackles, hisses
No moisture left to soften,
In the nighttime as well as day
The fire sits forgotten.
Another sits, hands outstretched
Loosening their furrowed brow
They smile, stand and turn around
Then wonder back into the cold.
The fire leaps our, barely contained
Destined to grow stronger
Where others burn themselves to sleep
The furnace melts instead.
Nov 22, 2017
Nov 22, 2017 at 3:18 PM UTC