The shock
and awe of
ordinary mornings,
saw me,
hat-in-hand,
plans slipped back
to the protein grain...

for
all my
false geometry,
the same
old pseudo attributes
exposed,

cloned,
sky-clad,
in this laughing gas
of dissipating
aspiration,

nothing more
than occupation,
poked in fear
and sold unease...




they never said,
the way would lead,
to any place but here...


but here
is where I'll stall
to find particulates
of dream.

It has to be
a lack of sleep..

Insomniacal thought-police,
could only dream this up


Delivered from
a rolled-up note,
that bug-eyed trope
of one-skin buzz,
runs ugly through
the neighborhood.
Some duggery of skull-top
lynching underground
resistance, thinking
every shot, a tracer
bearing names.

They are
out there, now
in no-man's-land,
that orange hell
of pictograms
and all of them
insane.

You remove the joy
then as sure as endings
faith will follow..

It takes time to beat the boy
the young can mend,
are resilient
but persevere
the cracks will
widen.

Fill that space
with fear,
shame
ridicule,
despair

let that
fatten.

Marinade
in isolation.

There you
have him.
Have him
beaten...

So kick him out
as Man.
Out
into the plan-less
waste of living,

Then watch the fruit
of all achievement
cast from your
own spiteful holding

rot beneath
the tree
from which
it fell....

Sometimes
when unoccupied
I hear the cries
of my lost legions

skin dispels
its drops of poison
to the tunes of lies
and treason....

Discomfort
pinches as regret
denies the liberty of
forgetfulness ....

We breathed so deeply
we could taste,
expatriating emptiness.

We  siphoned dreams
from mere escape
where minutes passed
like centuries...

So far,
the voices rally
from the vortice
of an underpass.
Endorsed by cavilled
penury, more yesterday
than newspaper.

but nothing here, can
change the course
of rivers.

Bent-double
in their algorithm
fixed within their fiction,
though, a sheathing of
their tar-skimmed blade
played life in minds
of old unplenty..

Winter-kin
they were,
come carapaced,
lenticular

Sat where
the startled couple char
that narcoleptic zinfandel,

untrammelled, in their
moon-trashed subterranea.

Gone sparingly
about the lane
as I have laid some
cause to rest

had turned
the tide of thought
to leave me grateful

then I look to you,
as if I could,
to find you there,
the where, you would

alive,
among the latter
days of April......

Stopped
by the crop-dusted rowan,

-the pulpit of Song Thrush,
of gossiping Starling-

The startling pew
of a tumbling hawk
made play for a way reimagined

Over the rising
leviathan ribs,
the sins
of a sea-pulled city,
diving, dividing
the room-cluttered skyline

peopled with liminal grey..

ah-ha,
my itty harbinger,
of all-means-green,
All hail!

(a voice not heard
since Woodcock fell
on cusps of wet November)

Your two-note declaration
comes with umpteen possibilities

emaciated yesterdays
disintegrate in sound...

earth quakes,
to see you cry

but where there's water
there is life

a love that fights for air

aloof, above the alibi,
the ad-libbed acts
of subterfuge

where proof is in the fire
of your making..

Of course
it has to end
one day,
it always does..

but not like this...

so, now is not
the time to lose,
that bright and burning
will, that serves you well
beyond the quarantine
of rich imaginations.

And, should those
feral torments run,
then face them down
assured, for you are
stronger with this love
that coves, your everything
and more....

Of course
it has to end
one day,
it always does

but not like this..

then,
to the sound of bells
we'll tell of days we braved,

together...

There are flowers
on the railings

guess the place is
coming up for rent,

one wonders
where the love goes,
once the locks are changed
the doors repainted...

no locus
for the laughter
over Sunday tea
and homemade cake..

they scrape away
the old base coats
and blow the flecks
into the past

One look up,
....and suddenly

to silly mortal me, they seem divine!

- the high, wide skies of late October-

Thin implies of Goldcrest
reed the conifers
-remind-

that findings of the time
may yet inspire.

Sea breeze
leaves my reasoned lips
a baffled map of goodbye kisses

wispish curds of milky-weigh white horses
riding out bespoke and breaking
making shore...

this day will never come again..

tomorrow
but a glib Gomorrah,
sorrowed in some foreign fold
of muffled do's and dont's

Monosylabic

lower case

becalmed

day-harm, flexed
with love thin spread
and unexpectant

textbook closure
white-of-lie

two minute token
taken back, on track
to stormless sanctums

          -leaving-

binding plight
of Seven Sisters

supple, vexed
impressed, Celestia
nuzzled by the dazzle dog

          -of evening-