Cool and refreshing. It's the American noun
For fizzy drinks, you know. A foamy relish stirs,
The bubbles rise like verbs, swirl about, and
Hiss at the surface. The faintest flavour of
An adjective, something sweet and forgiving.

Lightning strikes in the distance. The winds
Howl, moons echo in faraway orbits, the wolves
Throw up their heads and scream into the night.

A gust of moonlight rushes through your focus,
Cursing your vision with faint outlines, phantoms
Of your window-sill. You think you hear the sea
But you have no blue. None but your curtains,
Flapping in the gale, raising like a crescendo

Up to the coldest stars, spread out across the sky,
Brush-stroke on canvas. Violins, the taste of coffee.
The wolves howl. Moons echo with your paintwork.

Open road curbs against the valley, short,
As I move to greet it. My mind wails
Into the night breeze, contentedly stirring
Over my fingers, my thoughts, numb.
Silence throughout, still beyond, but ever
The vicious cyclone whirls, stirs.

Long hours of sleeping. A glass of whiskey
And a cube of ice, cracked and harsh and
Splashed out on the road, the same colour
As lamplight. Mind, cold, ice, spirit
In my glass, rushing through quiet lanes,
Rush'd through my eyes, my veins;

Starlight swirls and washes up my shirt,
Wrought with chills. My chest wonders aloud
At the pace of my heartbeat, the short
Breaths, gasping, drinking air, soft and uniform
And empty. A sort of present nonexistence
Whirls about my skin, my mind, my tears.

We hit a wall. Our vaguely sour
And broken dialogue drives us mad,
Like we can't quite finish a sentence.
Poles apart. Outside, the darkening clouds
Brood like the foul memory of
An insult, long forgiven, but
Not forgotten.

Our lines split and our words echo,
Writhing in agony, torn and bro-
Ken. Trying to form a question
On our tongues, rolling like hot oil,
Leaves raw burns in our minds. We lie
In quiet then, a rainless storm of
Unspoken fears.

Dust is that from which stars are made.
A paradigm of childbirth. Blood
Swirling in a hot centrifuge
Like a vortex of fabric, played
Delicately atop the palm of a
Darling wife, motherly creature,
Denied her union. Bled of that hot
Milk, strained like a force, though never

Pulled beyond, she sits atop her
Stool, draped in the clothier's mantle,
With the hands of a craftswoman. Her eyes
Bedazzle us, distant and purposeful.
Woven from dust, these gentle threads
Are tangled and wrapped unto themselves, formed
Into the fabric of a memory
And bled out in a lattice of starlight.

Dust is that from which stars are made.
The dust of a memory, ground
Under the craftswoman's pestle. Our lights
Are distinct, cut like a crystal
And hewn into the sterling weave
Of jewels, held out like a shroud
And left to dry, as that faint light
Dreams of swirling dust.

Ever-sung stories. Melodies, music
Becomes a lattice on which our
Light is recalled. A whispered melody
Turned lyric. Into the stars our
Memories echo, ringing through
Fields of starlight. Our resonance,
Committed to its odyssey, is sent off
With a kiss on its forehead.

Wisps adrift in the void count off,
One-by-one, and softly surrender.
The message of our memory,
Held upon a star, is lastly forgot
As the shroud dissipates and forms
A veil, adored and tragic and torn out
Across the sky. Gently woven anew,
Our memories refreshed like a drop of water.

Like a river of cold tears, that gentle Autumn rain
Streams down my window. Somewhere outside
A gale caresses the trees, whirls them around,
Carrying away their leaves, like broken fragments
Of a memory.

I can't sleep, because I don't want to. That late
Summer air fills my lungs, cooling me from the
Inside. My legs tingle from sitting a little awkward,
So I lie my head back, face the curtains, and wonder
At the rain.

I couldn't have known. Beyond my roof, a few feet
From my bed, a quiet breeze would rush along
And streak past my window, blow my curtains
Aside, carrying with it the faraway sensations
Of the world below.

Alone I sat in silence. I was not to feel the cold,
Wrapped up in my little duvet. I felt only the cool
Embrace of solemnity kiss my forehead, stir past,
And disperse among the bedsheets. I wanted to cry,
But they were good tears.

I will never forget. When I am alone, my curtains
Will brush against the window-pane, thin-paced,
And the tears will come again. Good tears, I think.
When I was little, I couldn't have known;
Those were the days.

It is very faint. The
Memory whirrs about
In my mind, like an
Old VHS tape. Cold

Static, drawing across
My faintest conceptions.
A grey recording of
A time past, old and

Gone. The bright screen
Under the dark sheets,
The cool August night.
That music. All of it

Faint, hewn in static,
Bleeding from decades
Of being replayed. Now
All I can do is struggle,

Struggle to remember.

'Password too weak'.
I smirk and strike my keyboard,
Add a couple of fives, a question mark
At the end. Who's weak now?
My password has been
Hitting the gym. Stronger than yours.
A small victory.

His new jacket,
Hot off the hot-sale shelves.
Strangely decadent - in the
Personal sense - yet straight,
Reserved, almost classy.
An honest facade, clean-cut

Hides within itself
A rich tapestry of ambiguity.
The lemur paws a jungle-vine,
From whence hangs a
Broad-winged and exotic bloom,
Rich with the complexity of a man

Whose aspect is honesty,
Simple integrity; but whose
Inner workings are ever more vivid
And complex, like the lush petals
Sewn through the lining of
His new jacket.

We happen then. Rushed with
The sharp reel of sirens, blur past,
Smashed out through my skull,
Whirring quietly in the void of
Night-terrors. The cold sheets.

Ice in my veins. Cold gusts of hot wind
Stir through my fragile meat. The
Tall, ebony fortress, the stacked floors
Towering like a stern smack on my
Cheek. The dry taste of ash.

Rising up through volleys, raindrops
Like gunfire, shells pouring across
My matted cheeks, dry eyes, no
Sleep, the street hugging me close,
Mad with love, eating me;

Frail puddles shatter under my
Reflection, heavy with sin and shame
And guilt and longing and pity
And myself, devoted one to its own,
As if I had never been born.

White frost spread thin,
Matte snow, broad-flowing,
Veils on vales, cool-eyed,
Soft-heart, sheet-white,
Glows shy, ignite,
Moonlight.

Sky-bright smears down,
Cross-hitch, white town,
Hand-stitched, fresh-laid,
White sheet, green jade,
Soft light, midnight,
Frostbite.

Very occasionally, but only sometimes,
I can hear the noise that nobody heard.
My cold mind strikes a chord. Pavement
Slabs boiling under the lamp-light, sizzling
In the rain, torrential salty cloud-tears.

A faint whistle, gentle blowing, soft-gazed
And patient, stirs past the eighth floor,
Descends to the seventh, sixth, then five,
Falling four more down when a sharp rise
In rain, splashing, hears the impact -

Crack. Wet and purposeless. Smashing hard
Against the concrete bristles. The splash as
She slumps, back-down, in a quiet back alley
Behind the car-park, lying to rest then, asleep
In a cry that nobody heard.

Where do you see yourself in a year?

Still living here -
A tactile skyline atop pillars of smoke
Heavy with guilt
And the craftsmanship of a generation of men
To whom Earth is a rock, immortal
Untouched by the bouts of the smog which ascend
To hold up their forges?

Where that which is green must also be man-made
And an old plant-***
On an old window-sill
Is the closest to what was here before? Is it a facsimile?
Where your throat hurts,
Chemicals an ersatz flowing stream
Of purest water -
And why is rainfall the freshest you can drink?

You haven’t always been here.
Where were you before? Was it green
Or blue, or any other colour
Besides this abiding grey? Perhaps
There were rainbows and colours
And sunlight, unfiltered by smog
Or dust. Warm, purposeful.
Her fragility charmed you.

Because our Earth is not immortal. A wanderer
In space, motherly, who are we to defile her?
A species of smoke and tar turning her soft hues sour
Colours unknown to nature
Like a drop of arsenic in a stream flowing through rocks?
Do you see yourself living
In a fortress, tumultuous to its steel bones
Each day burrowing deeper into her body,
Claiming her for its own, and ruining her at the same time?

So you think about your opportunity.
This life which fills her air, pulsing and vibrant,
To restore the purity we are missing -

Because Human and Nature are as one,
Invention is necessary but we are losing our time,
Virescent leaves brushing in the wind,
Our friends are loving, laughing, living
And we realise now that we are able to do so much better.

Or does none of that matter, somehow?
We make money to spend on plastic.
We are born, we work, we breathe, we die,
But we are still yet to run out of time

So where do you see yourself in a year?