Sometimes, another's steps are 
Washed away by rising tides, 
Crisp imprints on shifting sands, 
Cleansed by many broad rolling 
Swathes of wrinkled salt water.

Their steps are in front of yours,
Swept clean moments before yours
Is too absorbed in frothy
Remnants of sweeping ocean,
Subtle signs of connection

Unified by erasure.

Which is which?
The collective is composed of the singular
Yet when you take a step back and see
It is more than composed of singular
Rather, singularity is absorbed into the collective
Singularity cannot exist within collective
For it is collective
So be absorbed by it
Only then,
Can you truly see
The singular

My breath escapes in fluttered
spurts as I chance upon again
The Dog, leashed and collared,
guarding some plant pots
in solemn contemplation.

A short chain winds up
a stark red pole, attached
loosely to some rusted railings.
It appears as if he could go
flailing out and struggle free
if a momentary scent or sound
would strike him.

His ear flinched,
as if the rustle of a leaf,
before returning to its duty.

Synapses are painted in exalted tones,
strewn across broad pathways
on canvas sheets. They are pinned
onto trees, towers, and billboard-city-streets.

We splash colour, in broad strokes,
outlining the already-in and
already-there.



Not. The blank space still
Left



Full stop. But never-stop.

Ceaseless
flourishing.

The reality is that
our causality
determines our existence.

'Our', is meant literally
in that we also partially
determine our causality
  together.

  This is co-constitutive in nature.

However, this power to create
our own destiny is always within
the limits of our own contexts:
our past choices,
our environment,
our language;

the people around us,
the history within which
our identity emerges
and the current modes open to us
to be different
(or the same).

So, we are here.
And we will be there.
And we have
somewhat of a choice.

To wondering ink, for digressive white;
faltering whispers pierce still. Floundering
in sepid lines. Treacherous for design,
and write is reaching, still strays in flight.
Form divides inky black, it's etched and torn,
crimped and moulded. 'Apple' bares new being.
So scratches mark brave page, still caught in plight.

For solemn sin reveres the sheet unturned;
reaping closed letters. Night closes quickly,
smoulders sleeping stooping prayers. Soon keys fly
into quick black type. Fluttering upon grand
strokes of fleeting binding. Grasped, now, some yet
lost inspiration, sweet and finding, succulent in diversion.

Silver pole juts up; stretching
appendages wide and open:
for folded socks, strewn.
For open hands, scattered.

Fingers dance; metal spoons:
for shrunken stems, boiled roots.
For shallots, butter braised and salted.
For open mouth, eager.

A hollow cylinder spins rapidly:
for crumpled soaking shirts, for black
trousers; restrained and sophisticated.
For open bodies, naked.

Suddenly, darts of song birds;
streaks silhouetted by cold blue
masses over red-purple swallowed heat.

Huddled shadow, hunched
Under rugged oak tree

Carp swim in darting
Pummels, refracted scales
Shining rainbow
Droplets

Shimmering on the shifting surface
Was him, an-other face, unknown and
Alien: crinkled with crevices and dark
Swollen eyes.

His ear twitches:
Voice. Dripping
With full-throated
Fervor

He turns to face
An-other man
Distant shadow
On the horizon
Waving disjointed
Stick-like appendage
Silhouetted by the
Setting sun.

Inside, there is an urge for authenticity;
for metaphor - unadulterated expression -
which strips my skin bare, holds me up
to whipping winds and striking dusts: I am the
  Tanner

preparing my own skin. I would trim excess
fat and sinew and soak and stretch it thin,
like partchment, naked in the world's eye -
  Yet I don't know how
  To make my words transparent.

It takes honesty to thrive in insecurity
And bare the storm that afronts all
  Being;
To make my words discreet
Symbols:
Pillows on empty dreams. She is the
  pacifier, the lover and tyrant - all in one.

So, I don't know how to show
what I want to show. How to
use words, form, syntax and
language to convey meaning.
I say what it is that I want to
say and that is all, no more
Than that. But that is what is
so
  naked
About poetry. The
  doubt

that interrogates every line - really - a
forced-pauser, preventer, wall that stretches
infinitely narrow across every dimension.
It is what makes the end. Never

  the end

What am I?
I wonder
Sitting in front of a screen
A collective of conscious particles?
A singular being, being-for-itself?
I suppose
I am neither
For I am not
For I am

Cover your mouth and eyes and ears
As herald's hark bares blighted revelation —
Swell in ignorance as everything disappears

Into hazed spiderweb, strung in hate and fears
Swept in phosphate — threaded by persuasion
That covers your mouth and eyes and ears

As the blood-red diamond thread rears
F35 fighter jets and AI-****** recognition.
Swell in ignorance as everything disappears

Under the tutelage of ministers' affairs;
Brushing noses — profiteered annihilation
Of others' mouths and eyes and ears;

Still silent oil blots Polaris' shine, like tears
Pooling screens flashing nation's damnation.
Swell in ignorance as everything disappears.

Droves dead under rubble; law fails to adhere
For those that sanction genocide's continuation
And cover their mouth and eyes and ears.
Swell in ignorance as everything disappears.

This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a   poem. This is not a     poem. This is not a
                Poem. This is not a.                       Poem.

I look out of my window
And see clouds lightly
prickled by antenna
And gently swaying leaves.
But really,
I see nothing at all.

This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This

When nature's inhalation
whips up storms,
  We are set in stone monoliths.

Carefully carved intricate marks
decorate our walls; unfinished
since we must finish etching them
   Together.

Heed lightning cracks its
own violent tremor into
   Our stone walls.

Still! Winds will tear and maul
rains will erupt and slaughter
then give way to bright sky
   and deadly clear horizons;

reflecting back to us
our own trailing ripple
   of increasingly clear syllables.

Each etched now in our walls.
Mother printed the first
symbol, a delicate addition
first of many, now forming
sprawling racing lines.
Strung together, from the
    inside.

And the monoliths stand tall
and we bare storm
   and choose together.

AI echoes rapture, sin follows fall.
Apple divides permanently. Feet
washed masses kneel. Technology
bleeds incessantly. Judas whispers
secretively. Cheek turned, swollen
red and twice-marked. Snake bite.

Phone: Adam's rib. Our monastery.
8 billion serpentine invocations tempt
slyly. Double-footsteps tread
sharply. Sun bright, all-encompassing.
Dagger's thread cuts warming
wind. God's breath. Now dead.

Meek misers collate heaven's earth.
Inherited wealth un-dispersed.
Blessed persecutors revel. 'Number'
signifying the eternal. Apple divides
permanently. Bread now spread
thinly. Hoard expands needle's eye.

They are dying in our pointed cameras
Culled like vermin; dressed in plastic shrouds.
Droves of dead among more dead's hammered howls.

And cynical politics is now a clamor of
Writhing noise masking bombs that pound.
They are dying. In our pointed cameras.

And putrid politicians bare the hammer of
Genocide, fixing nothing, the bodies mound
Droves of dead, among more dead's hammered howls.

A broken cry is stunted by spilling bowels
Blasted into broken bits never found.
They are dying in our pointed cameras.

We are blinded; they are executed like savages
And we pretend the oppressor has not bound
Droves of dead among more dead's hammered howls.

Ode to the Stream that sits stagnant
somewhere over Northgate Green:

I have sat by it and observed
Rippled currents falling down
Into murky shallows, an un-natural
Green, like mountain-dew
Breathing frothy spots of bubbles
That circle a rhubarb vape
And a sprite can and a
Heineken can and a
Little hopping Wren darting
Between curled roots.

I remember too,
The drips of
Rain water
Worming
Down the dingy
Alleyways of
My childhood,
Dripping down
Nettles and
Seeping into
Cracked brick and
Sodden dirt
And part of - now a -
Sordid cigarette packet.

And from some
Geography class,
I remember how
This water was
Reborn, once
In massive clouds,
Grumbling masses,
Sky's mother who
Shadows the

Bursting
Writhing
Violent
Rivers
And
Vast Fjords
And
Reaching Peaks
And
Breaching Skys
And
Once
Birthed
As torrent
Rainfall
Tearing
Massive wounds
Into tectonic
Plates

The
Blood of matter
And organism
And that which
Carries our ****
In every form

But that's not all. As, I recall:
The lifting motion of staring
Into 'etched lines of water'
From rain, tracing bulbous
Recollections on opaque glass
And knowing they don't
Know where they are going
And I bask in the significance of
This insignificance.