Breath held short
Dare I tread
One step further
Put forth serene
But as the threshold approached
My smooth pulse quickened
Grew erratic
Sharing these dreads unspoken
The just-beyond unknown
To trust that these bonds, yet unbroken, will hold
Or to fold, shed this chance to have grown

Umbrella tangos
With a long-faded Cubs cap
In the sudden gale
Halestruck street swift abandoned
Stray dog their sole spectator

Crushed thyme & rosemary
The mountain of spuds fresh peeled
Leave sapped arms aching
Granny still fussing over
All dinner's little just so's

I thought I saw you reflected
In a passerby's sunglasses
The other day
Of course I knew
It couldn't be you
I see fragments
Of the wish of you
Most everywhere I go
I know it's not you
Couldn't be
Still
My wayward mind
Will insist on slotting you
Into every half-seen corner

Fire rose in the wood
A sudden flowering bloom
From Summer's dry depths
By lightning pollinated
Spreading seeds of choking ash

Six degrees below
Planetary motion shifts hues
Sunlight blues scattered
Splattering a blood halo haze
Across the swift darkening scene

Nightfall's halting progress
Nightingale alights on lush gorse
Faint glint of lamplight on beak
From shed door left ajar
Within, the gentle thrum of lathing
The soft mirth of shared labour
Hushed air atingle
Twilight stutters
& fades
A hedgehog snuffles

Vacant lot
Cement dust & foundations
Left unbuilt on
When the bubble burst

Fabulist am I
Then you're the fable
A lie that I devised to keep us stable
When wild lust finally died there wasn't much left
We felt, peaked, then denied, bereft of clarity
How much was hope
How much charity
Who knows, but this much is clear
If there's an untruth here
We are

Evil I did?
Maid I am
Adam mine
Denied is one man
I lived dogma
I am god?
Devil?
I name no side in Eden
I'm mad?
A maid I am
Did I live?

the sky void of light
city sprawl stole its shimmer
ever present glow

erasing winter
brash spring sings of forever
winter bides its time

Frost burns through thin gloves
Fallen jackpine bars the way
The search continues
Refused light by day-shy dawn
By lamplight I hack branches

A bare corridor
Death exits frowning
Gilding her indecision
Judases keening laments
Mangled notes offering pause
Quarantined rage simmers
Tasting untapped violence
With xeric yearning
Zestless

Shrouded eyes
Distant to cope
Already halfway there
Faintly
Fondly
Recognise his face

Each purposed smear narrates
The poised faked fire of tears recent abated
Daubed pigments interlacing to store traces
Of gut-deep betrayals worn on lying skin
The never-before retraced in stain & tint
The sour taste of imagined sins
Rose-tainted views feign caught hate

Robust numbers resist
With stubborn clarity
As tunnelvision experience suborns denial
Facts persist

Quilting words to pad
This unfathomable ache
Wrap me up hollow

Immersed in meadowfoam nectar
Deputised to cross the threshold
Feaster feeds a future

& then
Finally knowing itself
Candour rode naked
Unwrapped in a splendour
Born in shade
Freed finally from the clamour
Of clinging on
This raw dark undappled
A ripe fruit
Plucked from empty branches
After the fall

You found me at the point
Where resignation had shaded,
Quite when I don't remember,
Into contempt
The spiteful joy of being that bit better
Standing just a little higher

& contempt was in your eyes too
The urge to rise above me
Cradle yourself in haloes

Yet you smoothed your face out
Your I could never go there's
& started asking questions
& truly wanting answers

I stood against
Denial was my brother
Knowing I simply had to

Still you persevered
A prison door ajar
A fulcrum steady levered
Help me guide my own hand

Crickets chirping
A pulsating veil
Beyond which silence knocks
Heat seethes from baking rocks
Alive in this aching
Swathed in hot spring's cocoon
Crushed **** steeping
Nurturing her hushed bleeds
Wonder's womb weeping
A carrion bird perching,
Unsated, wails

Might we not linger
Longer here a while
Within this silken web we've woven
All yester's threads cling soft
The spindle, rusted & golden, lies
This finifugal hold dead hopes oft have
Time's sinews blinkering prospecting eyes
Might we not linger
Convenience sighs

Becalmed
Suspended in brackish undulations
Dunes shield this lagoon speculation
From seething currents

With intermittent vision tinted sepia
Apeborn questions exerting rigid apertures
Hinted insights rose unfurling thorns
Reason never deeply touching you
How incrementally are humans
Ever so defective
Instruments of
Truth

Sultry days
Lustrous beads
Drip from hanging papaya
Glistening like
Amber teardrop earrings

Amid the rubble
Of four dim millennia peeled back
A square of carved steatite lay
Lifted
Gently as a gossamer hope
To reveal
That mythic beast
A single horn curving
From its striated head
Whose fame reached Grecian ears
From Indus bed
Across miles & years
Leaving an inkmark murmur

All felt the fable
Dwindle & swell
The swindle whispered
Into every eyeball
The tramelled multifarious
Steady steady
Soft sell
Who'd fall for that
We say
As it settles down to dwell
In our depths & recesses
Tales of decline & progress
Denied

The summer stretched out
Languorous
Lissome
A stray cat
Sunning itself
In possibilities

Morphisms ignored
You seed sour schisms
Divide & bleed
Bluster-concealed claw of iniquity
Blink & you'll miss misdeeds
Bleak greed breeds alacrity
Mimic predators
Crack fatigue
Shoved in your leaking maw
Sweet as a fatal flaw niggling
Raw needs wriggling
Impelled again to begin again
Fresh meat, feed me, let me sin again
Defeat just past the next win
But when
Actions unsating swiftly flow
Satisfaction ebbs
Objectifying friend & foe
This spluttering glut will not quench
So‽

Gazing down
I see this dull blade drew blood
Dial blind as ache lulls
Defy ease as life oozes free
Don’t lie down
Don’t sleep
Keep fear sharp
As faint creeps the soothing deep
Passions eked
Awareness do not forsake me
Come on
Come on
Answer
I stare vague at the mess where my wrist used to be
Which emergency?
Ambulance please
Consciousness bleeds
I wake with cool linen covering me

Blossom mothered vibrance leaps
Urgent as life escaping
Transience raging in pursuit
Transfixed in nectar's temptation
Each passing day ignites
Rites of entwining rhythms
Fluttering slowly relents
Longing after
Youth

Nightfall brings respite
To drag wounded from corpse fields
First snowdrops in bloom

Ache of being isolated grown too close
You spin the wheel, though wary
Weary too
Another raw encounter: open wound
Another tongue duel probing to find out
The rule you’ve never broken
A lure, if spoken; left unsaid, a doubt
A bur to hook the tighter those who run
Nursing the rub
The present friction burns of uncertainty
The pleasant fictions formed to fill the gap
This shifting scene that saps with sifting urgency
This morphing tempter mutely mouths its name
Read my lips
Spill my dear
Do you decline
Or feast fears
Climb into bed
Sip on the nectar
Transfixed

Horizon spits a whisper
Greens & blues that twine & then meander
Land's answer to the intimacy of flow
To find paths unhindered
From hinterland to estuary's reply
Fresh leaping, salt undertow
Cry of seagulls
Tidal glow
Gravity's evergreedy show

Change is
An empty atlas
All steps
Shall fall on ****** earth
Chasing silhouettes
Urgent births
Future regrets
As yet unscripted epithets
The bold walk blind
A river unfolding
Toward the see
A tale told
In the edit