The trick is
to break the fall,

prepare soft landings

roll forward with
some standing joke,

calling-in the softball laughter

drawing on that coruscating
excellence of company

the fool congeniality
we coaxed in all conditions

We'll repeat this to ourselves
as we go about our
business....



Time will take the evidence,
possessions from the locker

but nothing is forgotten

as you're always
with The Boys..

Please,

explain..

Is there a peace,

a deep and swirling peace?

does that fabled light leave
the body ,released
from an anguish
of gravity

Can it be that you
are there?

Sustained,

outside these
small perceptions

even after all this time
the questioning

remains

So you identify
as a cat,...

I'm alright with that

come in through the flap
in the back door ,

eat jellied meat from a bowl on the floor

crap in a tray or lay
cables in neighbours
back yards

Shouldn't be hard to tell

you're a cat

Beeline to your feline kin, slapping
the thatch off a whiskery chin
and yowling like grief

treating your mates
to a corpse of a bird
that you hold In
your teeth

lie on the sack
with your tongue in your crack

and I'll back you're a cat

But I think you'll change

in fact,

I'm willing to bet

When you're not so busy,
oh, little Miss Frisky

We're taking a trip
to the vet

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

We
were once
the Spring

Easter voices climbing
from a namesake lane

Early risers,
Windmill limbed and finding
out our simple selves

Nimble, skinny
twitten skippers, wile-aways,
unburdened, burning, spotless
in our pheasant- feather gold.

One decade undecayed
brought all the stories ever needed

One decade undecayed
before the innocent
were sold

Becoming
husks of things
hollowed out and sickening
for nourishment

mystically redundant

raised to graze on empty calories,

spineless fluids puking
endless effluent
of chosen pronouns

Influence biology

Identity a bracelet taken
on and off at will, by
Pop-up preachers,
screeching out
their digital misogyny,

Narcissistic troglodytes,
who, prancing in their
echo-chambers,
jettison the Suffragette

there's no such noun as Woman,
Helen Reddy-or not,

Forgotten sacrifice of troops
has stooped to this..

Time to decontaminate

shall I tell you
of the Snowdrops
that are showing,
by the garden gate?

Slowly
it begins..

tiptoes down the bantam
skin, one bird awake

water holds both
cold and oldness
somehow fresh

and freezing air
grows, unaware

that yesterday
existed..

A lorry carries
off the stars

The barking dog

demands,

demands,

insistent as the car
alarming movement
at the window