Your cruel words are cursory
Mean less than null to me

Don’t need a PhD
Learnt more in nursery

Sweet song of ‘helping me’
No more than sophistry

Pick out the forgery
Lies with no artistry

Flowing in, eyeless grin
Sugary medicine

Gaslighting, infighting
Snarl under strobe-lighting

Saccharine blathering
Indolent flattering

Backhanded compliments
Heard without inner sense

I reject totally
Self-slighting sorcery

Callous affrontery
Bankrupting bursary

I have observed more
Preserved more

Have learned more
Deserve more

Have value
Don't argue

Can trust me
I must be

Enough being
just, me

So hear me,
my dear me,
coz now we agree

I am worthy

Drenched in feeling
Eyes drink the landscape

I could swear that each colour was
emotion-tinted
sorrow-toned
anguish-textured

How many stretched hours of living
made each heavy brush-scar?

What volume of rinsing tears
for each change of shade?

Why did the artist know instinctively that the people
were so small
in such a vast, pigment-thick world?

From this distance they feel like children
But I know that they are grown
At least on the outside

Agony
and aesthetics
amalgamate in
assembled alchemy

Are these thoughts
artist-intentioned
landscapist-birthed
painter-engineere­d?

Or are they my thoughts
reflected
by brush strokes?

Designed to elicit, not instruct
To return, not to teach
To cast-back, not to create

This open canvas
in muddy colours

A perfect, terrible mirror
Helping me gently
in my now softened
sadness

A sheltered microcosm saved in greys
Abandoned tennis courts behind the shed
Discarded sports cap melty-crinkle sighs
Dark bitumen to amplify the heat
And any sorry hurt that worry-bled

A stomachful of fluffy food forgot
Lone lunchbox waiting courtside for its turn
Now wasting as the cracking plastic tells
Of ground more breakfast than of tennis fit
To fry the egg, then desiccate and burn

Sardonic jesters loudly quiet call
How far away is cool, and further still
Acerbic head on mordant shoulders rests
As pair of caustic, bitter lips impart
The ugliest corrosive acid swill

Sark-wolves emboldened shrinking of their prey
How close is sheepish shame, and closer yet
Apologetic hair, repentant shoes
New fascinating laces, aglets lost
Shy socks serve not to aid, but to abet

Dear deprecants, embrace your rueful flush
Let bashful gloves be padded by this truth
The catch-calls curse less caustic on your soles
Electron-pairs now balanced in their roles
Basic strong since graduating youth

A single gull in turbulence soars strange
Beach wind-groans whipping sand to concrete hail
In mute fatigue, the blue-grey sky submits
Obedient to winter’s shore-lashed slap
Until pacific breezy balms prevail

Across the roadway suburbs roost on dunes
Dry salt-sand soils, poor beds for cottage plants
Post sand-blast rain provides a rare life-drink
Wet softens crunchy grasses wielding burrs
Now possible their jaunty wind-bend dance

Three weeks have lapsed since breath was morphed to talk
Your silence cuts - ice words would waste chill air
I huddle under muddled blankets shield
To hide-sleep travel time to spend the day
No warmth in lonely waking waiting there

This chatless treatment, stony, icy hush
Sound muffles as a newly fallen snow
In quiet, distant cool is bitter fierce
Cold time a sorry echo of disdain
As timid clock dull thud-ticks glacial slow

New sound returns thawed tempers given days
Shy cautious in first breaths, as blue-grey sky
Out-waits the stinging punishment in sand
Outstretched the quaking warmness-seeking hand
As spring comes melting frost to snug and dry