Today is the day
I am chosen and lifted
High up from where I lay and
Threaded through that small hole
In your ear.

Jingle, jangle, cling.
Beads or brass or sunny glass,
We swing with each way you turn your head
******, it’s a sight
Gordon Bennett, what a delight

Gentle shuffling sets us swaying
The Sunday morning music
Is playing as we dance
About your lobes
And the smell of coffee

Rises, splendid.
With each sip
We glimpse the ceiling,
Too and fro about the kitchen
Rhythms that are trodden daily

Outside in this luscious garden,
We flutter,
Somewhat wildly,
Chattering, as a gust of wind
Pronounces itself unexpectedly

Vibrations.
Buzz, shaking us aggressively
The sewing machines hum
Chugs relentlessly
Fingers creating elegance deftly

We clang and clatter
With movements of laughter
Bouncing brightly in good company
Hearing new stories and
All the old ones again.

Back in the bedroom,
We’re slipped off
Buried in palm
And placed back down
For another day.

If you were to open the hills, all of the past would pour out.
Treasure, piling on bones, piling on pottery, piling on stones
Secrets and lives. Spilling out, in
A flood of velocity, time breaking forwards
Waking up above the ground, a stranger.
You are small, in the wake of all that.
Caught up to your ankles. Trudging
Trudging for as long as your calves hold out
Trudging and looking
Scanning and sweeping
Bowing your head and trailing a hand through the rubble
The rubble stares back.
Throbbing beneath your palm
Charging you with something to know.
You fall to your knees, getting down low and crawling
Strands of hair fall into your vision
As you crawl onwards.
As you crawl your hair gathers treasures
Coins and jewels and collar bones quiver with a force
Melding into one.
Callouses cover your hands now, you're in deep.
Been trudging onwards for miles. The hills gaping wide.
The treasure spins into strands, miles long, weighty strands
They know you, reaching up like familiar hands
And pulling you down,
Roots of an ancient kind
You peer through the weight of tired eyes
The pinched sun going out and
You desperately seeking
Tearing at the ground at the piles of all that past
And letting go of a dreadful wailing sound
Killing the air. There's a glint
Onwards, up ahead
Taking charge. You drag, pull, peel yourself, just a little further
Onwards, just up ahead.
And brushing aside the lint,
You have it in your hands, restored. A little piece of what went missing
Rolling over into time, your hair wraps you, plaits you
The grand hills gulp and the past sinks back inside.

I'm sitting here.
I'm standing.
My forehead is sweaty, my arm drops to my side
I can't keep still. Fidgeting and carving out my anticipation with my nails into plump skin, that is begging to burn
To feel sharp and hot and draw attention, my attention, away.
It's uncomfortable to be this aware.
My cuff itches from the sweat and cheap nylon mix. Why is this all I own, Why does it fall over me like a waterfall. All downhill. Weight, that wears me. Saggy.
I glare at my feet, throw my hands into my pockets and immediately pull them out again. In, out.
She wears heels, they clack past. Him, in the leather soles, taps by. He wears boots. She's in pumps.
I wipe my palms on my trousers
Lift my wrist, pushing back the sleeve, I'm impatient. And I want everyone to know it. Him over there, I want him to know it. Her on the opposite side has to know, because I can't be the only one to know it. To carry it all. Then I might actually melt. Feel my shoes fill with water and my heavy suit to plummet, as I cascade over the edge, liquified.
Not still? I lift my head to the sky, God it's bright, dash back down again. Bobbing. Time is dragging.
It shouldn't be much longer
I turn my head from left to right, for something to do. To appear unsure of the route. Will it come steaming from around the right corner or the left.
It's so hot.
Why is it so hot? Today, really?
I lift a hand again, to comb back the stray hairs. Sweep them back into place.
Hands in pockets
Hands on hips
Arms folded
Down by my side
Foot tapping
Now pacing
The birds are singing
The sun's still blinding
Now determinedly still, until I think I hear something.
I whip my head, to the left
And in the distance I see it. Drawing nearer.
Crushing forwards.
My chest. Won't my chest be still.
I settle in tension. Now, it's unavoidable. Any minute we'll be face to face.
And what will I do then?

You, have conflict with the chill night air.
Tussling tight in your bag for warmth
Knotting yourself in twisted clothes,
A chattering of bones, that won’t quiet...
Discomfort strikes harder
Flipping its attitude in anger.
You boil in nausea as the sun rises
Clawing fingers over limbs, breaking out
Of your tent that’s abominably silent.
The quiet culprit, burns as an oven.
Uninterested in your clogged airways
And ketchup red eyes, glued shut in sleep.
You stalk, like Gary Oldman, burnt by sun
As Dracula, weakened by day,
By the pollen. That has you sneezing
Twelve or fifteen in a row,
Stoney rings about your eyes, you meet mine
And brandishing an arm up high
(To smear away the allergy) you say,
‘Never again. Never again in my life
Will I, go camping.’

It’s stoic and still, flushed in white light,
Yellow and blue.
Hollowed out in my wall,
The cupboard.
Disturbing its silence with our screams and sweaty touch
It frames us.
The art of me and you.
The sound our colour makes spills out
Over the sill, my flesh pressed in fury
Up against five walls,
Clasping. Our eyes lingering,
I admire you.
Soaking up your instinct.
The art of me and you.

Almost immediately in time with the weight my chin took in being placed in the palm of my hand, the thoughts that floated so delicately in space, transparent for my eyes, extinguished completely. I will have to rack and painfully grasp them into being again.

It doesn’t take much
To be ****.
Drop out of your suit,
Forget everyone else’s
Meaning of crude.

But your fingers
Are burning cold
And your heads,
Hot as the sun
Might be to hold.

Aches that numb,
The first fear
Of eyes passing over,
In white light
You appear.

Your music plays,
Hands draw fast.
Time wobbles,
Sliding out of position,
At last.

It doesn’t take much
To be ****.
Drop out of your suit,
Forget everyone else’s
Meaning of crude.