The bright moments of the past do not die
They do not lie idly in the earth, buried beneath unpassable tombs
Their beauty does not fester or languish
Their times come again

They are reborn, are the bright things that come
Those jewels dug up by autonomous spades
They do not die, they are reborn
Our excitement like an old friend reunited

Do not mourn the past, it did not fall
Left to rot, mummified in worms
As a child when we picked it up, as an adult when we carry it
Those moments live on with us

Again

I found a pool, small
Of tepid waters, shallow
Left imprinted by the things
That long since grew big, climbed and,
Sought the ocean

I know the pool, I grew tall in it,
Know it for what it was, once
It seemed deep as the seas, wide as the horizon
Brimmed with life a thousand-led
By all the verdure of many beasts

Each began as tadpoles, swam from their sacs and
Knew magnitude, kept to the shallows
Looked on at the lurching fish with,
Fear. Met a generation in those
Huddled beside them, scared.

Growing, their arms and legs,
Uniform in formlessness, ill-defined but
Excited. Each learned to swim and laughed at
Each other. Spiralling, gangling, twisting games
Were played on shallow borders.

Our bellies touched the silt, our eyes turned out
And we flicked our feet to find the open air, and
It wasn't so scary, terrible not, look at me! Look
At me! I can go see those dark holes, hiding
Nothing, I'm sure. Let's go.

As we lost ourselves in the growing dark, we
Lost sight of the other tadpoles, and
Grew faces, eyes, mouths, antennae, or
Unsure, we grew and each became streamline, in
a thousand different ways, we swam to the centre of the pool.

And met each other, as if for the first time, but
Saw no similarity, saw only our differences, we
Smiled and looked about, and each, in our own way,
Discovered the light. We did not stop growing, did not think to,
Knew no fear, saw no dark corners, scalps touched the open air.

And we went, each found the same certainty at the same time.
We must leave, a fish, a salamander, a boatman, a snake.
Shed the oily waters and explored the fresh air. Some,
Found they could not breathe, some found themselves prey to
Unknown evils. None stayed, none I knew.

I am back now, face weathered by winds I knew not were
Out there, hands pricked by something called thorns, the
Waters so small, tepid, stagnant, shallow from all the
Absence, those things that now walk, or lie, or fly, I
Know not why I came back, or why I look now into the puddle

I see only frogs. I hear only croaks. Old things living in a drying world.
Leathery, cold blooded, oily,
Speaking only of the times when they were tadpoles,
Thinking only of the time when they were new. I
walk away, and shed the thoughts that link my path to them.

I face the wind, I face the thorns. I feel my neck and
Hold closed my gills with thumb and forefinger
Forgetting...

Croak.

I felt her on my belly
A well fed boa
Squatting for the day

She writhed as my heart beat
Drawing tighter to my
Pinched breaths

I saw wild eyes, glancing, prancing
Sprites, friends of the serpent,
Laughed, for I had fallen mute

To the forest floor, and lay poisoned
Shrinking before a gleeful crowd
In love with an animal.

What's the point of the stars if they only fly to mock us
To tell of a world beyond that thick blanket of night
A moon victory above them all tells of coliseums of the cosmos
A giant in a game we were never asked to play

The sun burns itself to nothing
And we catch the ashes, plant fields with its offcuts
Never tasting banquet, never knowing super nova
Alone in the dirt beneath life

Currents blow overhead, pushing ice and rock
As balloons let adrift, finding freedom in emptiness
While our feet only know tracks and fields, grass and mud
Life with food and sleep, not soul or poetry.

Crooked grow our limbs and we think ourselves mighty
Gangly forms dancing tiny
While great domes of landscapes given face
Smile at each other and speak

Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Hades
All principles in the sky, too graceful to be understood
And not wanting our foul tentacles of knowledge
To grip them, happy to keep away from

Us oily things.
No, I don't like being human
I don't like being
greasy

Sorry said the merry man, adjacent on his way,

I've gone and ticked you off while I've been out tramping today

And in my careless frolic I seem to have stole your heart

What brutal lust you blow towards me, gushing like a ****


But I'm not la-da-dee-da-dee, a manly bearded sprite

Jingle though my stirrups do like dormice held too tight

I'm a serious enterprise, a man deeply invested

In stacking stocks and picking prices, if you're interested?


She danced reluctantly to him, unnatured to the rhythm

But with a wink she start'd to slink and jim-jam along with him

The two then picked their sandals up and shuffled down the street

And drank and laughed amerrily at all they chanced to meet


To the bank they wandered, legislating they did go

In government, in finance, in high station to and fro

Each day they yawned and gargled on a fresh new tonic smell

And went on down the street to make a fresh mismanaged hell


Soon agiggling and adultering they fell down in a mess

Holes and tears ashaming his and her once modest dress

There they lay and blocked the road till bobby picked them up

And once they'd laughed their fill of him they bribed the greasy pup


He took them to the city square and let them borrow his hat

They gave out fines and sentences for being thin or fat

They stood on boxes, had ideas for rent for half a pence

And sat gracefully cross-eyed on the splintering picket fence


Then donned a mitre, did a dance, their pageantry displayed,

They became gods, just for a laugh, the vicarage dismayed

When down from heaven lightning bolts, shot with a holy hum

Came buzzing like a hornets' nest and shocked them on the ***


A **** of smoke, a whiff of cheese, the townsfolk breathed release

Gone at last those terrors past, they could return to peace

Then up from high a saintly sigh two angels billowed down

Golden halos greasy and no pants beneath their gown


The townsfolk wept and cried aloud, their stomachs plopped and churned

To see the pair of villains there, so gracefully returned

Blessed be the kingmakers the two of them agreed

Until next weekend, Duw my dear, and until then, God's speed.

My tongue sharpened today

Angles fell off it like classroom fancies

Rationalised to a point, its first act

Was to knock out my fangs from behind.


I stumbled about the house

Slopped through the bathroom door

And foamed at the toilet seat, a

Wave broken over a rim of briny coral.


My salt winked about the walls, around the tap, between the wiped tiles

In the shower head of porous sponge

The seaweed in the pipes crawled up

And drowned me in the sickly sweet.


Downstairs smelt the same, logically the sea dumped down

Underwater fish glided past my window, all with the same

Grim face against the mirrors, aping the ocean

With me trapped inside.


I turned on the same song, fifteen times,

The sound tried to reach me with such ambition

But it floated to the top, belly up in its bubbles

Ridiculous, I scratched the date on the seafloor and entered the kitchen.


Drips everywhere, grease stalactites, from the tiles, the yawning oven, the spatulas

A Cretaceous museum where savagery is kept

In little plastic boxes, with clear peelable lids

A fresh, messy ****.


In the hall the grey light descends through slit windows

Colour settling at the bottom like grit, all the greys so tall

Give the narrow rectangle an aftertaste of dust

Just one keeper before me


It devours my key, hacking as it gobbles

But it does not anticipate my twist

I gut it from inside, it spits its meal back at me

And I swing its limp, dead frame 90 degrees.


Stepping out feels like a moonwalk, with Houston's neutral formulas

Unheeded in my ear, finally I can greet the clouds, that probably escaped,

Like me, fumes from the chimney

Pale and fading away from lack of auspicious sun.