Confidence is key
In oh so many ways
Much more than with
The things you do.

Walk tall, stand still,
Be open and direct.
Show them all
That you are completely
Unafraid.

Don’t fidget, look around or gabble on.
Don’t show your anxious self.
Speak slowly, with pause
And show you are assured and calm.

For confidence is like a virus,
Spreading out throughout the room,
Infecting all
With that assertion
That You
Are Number One.

If only I myself was brought up this way,
Who knows what I’d have done?
But better late than never,
As they say.
Let’s start,
By being tall,
And cutting out
That slouch.

But remember,
Never compare:
Treat everyone as equal,
Never be arrogant:
Be gently assertive.

Paul Butters

© PB 9\3\2018.

I'm just a man
               with a pencil
sharpening it.
For blunt words
        never mean much,
but sharpened words
          are smooth
on there understanding .

In this park there are birds atop ice cakes
stiff mittened kids, cold nosed and half froze
they slide on paths of glass, toward home.
A small stream cuts through this place,
black water humming with coots and ducks.
Long toothed icicles waiting to impale the earth.
Beneath our feet, we crack and shatter tiny frozen ponds,
revealing muddied blades of grass, green as in summer.
A myriad of birds in the sun, come to puff and quiver,
but soon the mountain clouds will come to shroud
the day, the sky so cold, a frost in grey and silver.

Look at the stars, pinholes into another universe
where you aren’t so afraid to be who you want to be,
where you chase all your dreams with unabashed glory.
“I’m made of them; if only I could shine as bright.”

Where do you hide in the forest of your mind?
Is the sky full of light or does the weight of nothing bring you down?
I can hear your crying somewhere in the pines and ash,
throwing wishes into the dark like whispers meaning **** all,
falling down in the forest and no one can hear the sound.
And as I wandered, I found you in the dark;
I never saw your face; I never saw your face.

You are an aurora, a dazzling display of colour on the black,
and I wish you could see it for yourself.
I could take a photograph but my breath in the chilly air
clouds your lightshow and mists your brilliance.
Even if I could show you it, you’d say your thanks
then ******* to show someone with brighter eyes.

I still love you, and look at you the way you look at those stars,
burning all those billions of miles away,
and my love gets lost somewhere in those light years,
swallowed up by the dark, blown away by your tempest.
One day you’ll find me wrapped up in my winding sheet, I’m sure,
hearing me whisper your name when the storms should drown it out,
and the touch of my hand as I reach out to yours,
the kiss of starlight on your forehead,
you’ll realise true love has never felt so ******* far away.

The lindens are lining the promenade
how we wish we were seventeen again
their branches arching ever skyward
framing Vincent's starry manifold
swallowing every thought and sound
each caveat, each dolce far niente
now fading and then pulsing with the
rising and ebbing of rhythmic tides
how serious this business of life is;
our limbs intertwine as we scramble
shaking sand from between our toes
we sit on wicker recliners and imbibe
beverages that splash down so loudly
with the crashing of frolicking waves