Trash talk
Constant bickering
Insults & snide retorts
These gobshites never give it a rest
Must be home

Last day
Change is tugging
Exchanging digits though
Moving on don't mean we can't stay in...
Where'd she go?

Pay dirt
Eyes her target
Sit just so & sit tight
Let him think that he's the hunter, then
******* fish

Nat'ral
Like the old days
Green, not one chemical
Saw it on my social media feed
Ancestral

Acorns in absentia
Adorn the barren field
Ungathered post the autumn fall
Unsprouted seed beyond recall
Withered where once was wherewithal
In accord with the fallow yield

And will the bare earth reignite
Weedwild and verdant, full of fight  
Second wind, second sight,
Some forgotten, refracted beam of light
In shifting dust revealed

Some autumnal hymnal hummed
Will popping fruit to fullripe come
Once this lull’s long hurt is healed
This restless tomb unsealed

For now
Acorns in absentia
Adorn the barren field

When I say
You’re too kind
I mean it
The dull stabs
Of your best intentions
Only stir the wound
Please
Leave me to grieve
These woollen words you weave
To soften woe
Do not deceive
My threadbare wits
That they are whole
No peace for me maybe
But…please
A little quiet

A handsome gift
Not on the wedding list
Elegantly packaged
Glass figurine
Bride & groom
Entwined in first dance
Wrapped up in each other
On the box's base
Clear but concealed
Warning:
Repeated exposure to heat & cold
Can expose invisible cracks

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

& 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

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

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

Quilting words to pad
This unfathomable ache
Wrap me up hollow

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

Hit me up yeah

Didn't you hear it
Insistent pounding
A distant rave
Or, more like, thrumming
A steady motor
Regulating
Growing deeper
Doppler shifting
Must be moving
Ever further
Exploring
Retreating
Heading for some farflung meeting
A severed murmur
Faintly familiar
But...
Did you not hear it

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

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

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

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

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

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‽

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

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

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

Shadowboxing with a dead man as a massacre stills  

Fingerdancing to smoke & mirror the masses

Whistling frantic in the gathering dark to steady the ranks

Faith trumps facts

A strong man acts

Greasepaint thick

Growing cracks

A flailing will can kick up sparks

Keep squeezing shills

Catch easy marks

Throw enough show & something will stick

That's shitbusiness!

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

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

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

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

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

erasing winter
brash spring sings of forever
winter bides its time

You know
That moment
When they say
I don't care about all of that
That's in the past
It's us now
& you feel
Uncertain
& full of hope

Babes have hit puberty hard

Since we were entwined

& most days

I don't even think of you

& some days

I can't even call

The contours of your face to mind

Yet

When I dream

Obscure dreams

Vivid dreams

Humdrum dreams

Surreal dreams

Foolish dreams

My lover

                  there

                             is always you

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