Pale-faced beneath twilight’s awning, shadowed time skips
A beat measured in dust motes and attic silence;

Frameless ether holds its breath and portrait likenesses
Swivel eyes right, suspended between the minute and the hour;

In sequence, Whittington’s chiming sepia tones wring out
A tulip of port and one last cigar from drapery long hung;

As floral meanders unwind from a walnut casing
Inlayed with the gamine whimsies of our cherried youth.

'Actually, my friend in Taranaki makes the stars. I combine them with my own elements and string them into garlands,' wrote Makery. There was an element of apology about her words. As if she’d been rumbled. As if someone had confirmed the voice of self-doubt that whispered in her ear, 'Who do you think you are, calling yourself an artisan?'

Stringing things together is applied artistry - whether it be words, Scandi-style stars, or fairytale mushrooms threaded on candy coloured twine. We are all hunter-gatherers who construct our creations from discovered elements. Some transmute received knowledge into constructed knowledge. Others beachcomb lexica for found syncretic treasures. All aspire to contribute to the infinite compendium of human self-expression, to create something which says, 'This is who I am.' With the silent addendum, 'I hope you like it.'

Hire purchase, Hewlett-Packard, hand phones and - just maybe - Harry Potter have got nothing on Hello Poetry. A house party of honey pies, head pixies, and horizontal plotters hot piping their harmonic power from Hyde Park to Hunter’s Point, the High Plains to Himachel Pradesh. Household profilers, home porters, health practitioners and - it may be said - the odd human particulate here to engage in high-priority human performance.

P.S. Heart points and historic preservation aside, what the hoi polloi is up with those hit-by-pitch holding patterns, Eliot?

If you place me on a pedestal,
I can’t help but disappoint you;
For no one is infallible,
No one survives unbroken,
No one remains unchanged.

When it all turns to custard,
Who do you blame?
Me for letting you down,
Or yourself for doing the same,
By expecting too much of me.

Is it not a paradox that her deception should leave her beauty so unmarked? Her winsome countenance - generously admired - leaves her suitors abject; mere puppets on a string.

Verily, the essence of her is as a tarnished trinket. For to mine own soul she appears as jaded as a ***** house quean. Her eyes which once shone with the light of truth unblemished, a colourless and infinite mire overgrown with the entangled falsehoods she has seeded.

Confessor, I am reborn,
Vain with ash and frankincense;
Absolved of my inverted pleasures,
Reconciled to the morality of suffering.

Confessor, I am returned,
Predestined to gravely offend;
Nimbly contrite in my genuflection,
Gracefully weak-kneed in my resolve.

Confessor, I am reborn,
Although aged by my discretion;
Examined satisfactorily by my conscience,
Blessedly relieved through your encouragement.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I do opine that a constant life, although agreeable in its construction and longevity, may render its subject without two sympathetic words to rub together.

Love travels sideways,
Down dark alleys,
Along winding country lanes;

Arrives late,
Hesitates too long,
Leaves early;

A journey to take,
A destination unmapped,
An invitation to linger when we least expect it.

[Enter Marco, a young Milanese courtier.]
It is he, is it not, whose honeyed barbs drip with sweet condescension, and whose kisses taint fair Bianca’s lips with similar speech? Behold, how he frames her vision to reflect his own and directs her preferences accordingly.

Fie, I have been April’s fool in believing Antonio my ally. His encouragement was as sweetmeats to a greedy child; but I have chipped a tooth on that candy-coated morsel and found its centre to be flavoured with deceit.

My cousin Bianca, whose name speaks directly to her nature, whose light once made shadows dance for joy; how extinguished she appears now. For as Antonio sparkles and splutters at her side, her brilliance flickers and fades.

Lo, how he has seeded his untruths within her honest heart. His lies smuggled like contraband, his blandishments the articles of his trade. God’s wounds! Such a purveyor of frippery and falsehood I have never met the equal of.

It is high time to confront this sneak thief in his lurking-hole and to uncloak his creeping connivance. I shall bottle my rival’s words and choose carefully the occasion for their uncorking; then pour for the crowd a rich liquor of ripe requital.

Handcuffed politely to the bedpost of his inspiration,
he is optimistic that this time the limits
of self-imposed constraint will be breached, if not brutalised entirely.
~
‘Don Quixote’ - a whimper of metaphor;
‘DoN QuiXoTE’ - a rush of chiming vowels;
’DON QUIXOTE’ - a panic of ecstatic prosody.
~
Ignoring his aching wrists
and with imagination unfettered,
he reaches for paper and pen, and begins.

Maybe...
I will...
So one day...
I could...
If only...
I might...
Just maybe...
I should...

Why don't...
I think, really...
To be frank...
I'm not sure...
It's possible...
Probably...
The odds...
One in four...

Within reason...
Yes, quite...
And besides...
Who knows when...
It's not...
In the meantime...
You know me...
Then again...

Given the chance...
Nevertheless...
They would never agree...
It's likely...
Of course...
Yet, there's no guarantee...

All things being equal...
However...
You can rarely depend...
On second thoughts...
Sometime soon....
Well, that's settled then!

‘How quaint,’ remarked Mistress Hora as she turned the afternoon on its head, ‘that you would consider time to be a linear construct.’

‘Positively post-historic,’ agreed Master O’Clock, nodding his head in perfect synchrony with the orchestra that played inside his ear. Today was Waltzday (or so he had named it), an interminable reminder that atomic metronomes particularly those of Viennese manufacture were not to be trifled with.

‘Be assured, my dears, that this fancy is a passing one and exists only as a fleeting extemporaneous distraction,’ our Mistress continued. The first year students breathed a collective sigh of relief. ‘Now, I want no clumping, no running ahead, and NO helical improvisation. When yesterday’s fish and chips come wrapped in tomorrow’s newspaper it gives our school a most unfortunate reputation.’ The class chortled as one. ‘Most importantly, please remember to take your pocket guide.’

I reached for my bedraggled copy of The Theory of Chronometrical Fluidity: Compressed Edition and wrung the pages out. I had failed badly at applied clepsydrics and my cousin Widget wasn’t letting me forget it. From behind the glass, I spotted her playing a furtive game of Gregorian and by the look on her face February was winning. I blew her a lemniscate to grab her attention. She scowled, looked up from her losing streak and giggled when she saw me spiralling in her direction. ‘Good luck,’ she spiralled back.

Miss Hora flexed her wrist and glanced at her temporal transponder. ‘You will be marked on cuneiformity, consistency, and rate of continuance. Now be off with you. Tempus fugit!’ With a flick of her bejangled fingers she opened the S.A.N.D. grates. I held my breath and jumped.

I wash my hands,
And wring them dry,
Watching my worries,
Disappear with the grey water,
Down the plughole of life.

Find
Your bliss;
Channel your
Inner godliness;
25% off inspiration;
Sale ends this Sunday.

It was a dark and stormy night, or at least it was for our single-parent family. The rest of the neighbourhood was enjoying the kind of clear skies which meant a hard frost overnight and a slippery ride to school in the morning.

The barometer in our neat, wee house at the end of our short, ordinary street was falling rapidly, as it often did these days. My father, an Iraq War veteran - ’Honourably discharged for dishonourable reasons, and don’t you forget it. ****** fascists!’ - was in charge of our weather. From blue skies with candy-cotton clouds in the morning to an eerie half-light of silent anticipation by late afternoon, we would end the day huddled around the kitchen table waiting for the maelstrom to hit.

We ate carefully trying not to scrape our plates with our knives and forks, and avoiding each other’s eyes. The cauliflower cheese was examined as closely as every other vegetable my aunt Kate - ‘I’ll not have my family eating slaughtered animals!’ - served up to us. You’d think the food on our plates was the most interesting thing in our precarious little world. Peas were my favourite because you could count them over and over...until they were finished.

Wind and rain lashed our evenings regularly. Sometimes we were treated to the automatic-rifle fire of hail, but worst of all were the sandstorms which ****** all the air out of our home and stymied any hope of sleep. On those occasions we all huddled together in my sister’s bed - ’No, Alex! It’s Livvy’s turn to hold the torch. You can look after the phone in case we need to ring Dr Matt to help Auntie Kate.’

We updated our worst-vegetarian-creation notebook and talked in close whispers about the weather. Mostly, we sat quietly and longed for blue skies and sunshine tomorrow, while the captain cowered in the cubby-hole beneath the stairs and screamed into my six-year-old brother’s plastic walkie-talkie. ‘Man down, man down, man down!’

I remember the day we first met. In the doorway of that tiny boutique with the leadlight windows on the corner of Main and Wharf. You looked expensive, all laced-up leather and felted wool, commando meets catwalk. Your friend was in stitches about something, and it was when you turned to her and stuck out your pretty tongue - then, right then - that was the moment that I decided you were going to be mine.

I put aside my embarrassment and guilt. I ignored the whisperings of my empty wallet, and the thought of what my flatties would say in the morning. I picked you both up and took you home. Two for the price of one.

Ten years later, both of you are still around. Not quite as streamlined and sassy as you used to be. Your souls - my bad - soles are in need of repair, your white stitching has blackened, and your brass eyelets are looking a little worse for wear. But we’ve walked miles haven’t we? You, me, and your mirror image - BFFF - Best Feet Forward Forever.

I wonder, when the apple fell from its tree did gravity reinvent itself?
Did the weight of scientific endeavour hang heavier on the branch?
Did the sun cease to affix the earth with his benevolent glare; the moon blush with shame for having - just once - wandered from her orbit, distracted by the stars? I think not.

Would Silvia have hesitated to tread through the unfrequented woods of Mantua, have declined to walk by silvered path to meet her Valentine? And what of Roxane? Could she have failed to be enchanted by the seductive stories spun beneath her night-time balcony, to be inspired by a shining artemisian crescent?

All of life can not be defined and quantified, expressed as an equation and mathematically declared a derivative of time, distance, and mass. We need no formula for beauty, heartbreak, commitment, and courage. For there are more things in heaven and earth, my dear Isaac, than are written in your philosophy. And - what’s more - you **** well know it!

Beyond the shanty town of Midtendrift, where the moneylenders ply their trade among the aimless and avaristic, lie the ice prairies of Ensomfelt. The region is a barren wasteland whose boundaries are flanked to the west by the bottomless crevasse of Issorg and to the east by Lake Hjertestorm.

Those who come to wander this no-man’s-land may find that they disappear from the earth for a time - from themselves, and from the memory of others. Relying only on intuition to guide them, they pass this way unseen, their weary feet making shallow graves in the freshly fallen snow.

The rocky outcrop at Engeldrøm marks the gateway to the in-countries. Nestled beneath the foothills of Mount Håp, this is the place to which souls lost to the world of ego and ambition return to take up their torch and remember.

During the long northern winter, the sky above Håp is an expanse of indigo ocean punctuated with an infinity of lamplights. Among these lanterns which float free of the earth, the North Star shines the brightest. It is here that you will find your journey’s end and a treasure trove of truth, forged in fire and sealed in ice.

She sheds her memories like the filaments of a dandelion clock. Fragile and irreplaceable, they slip and tumble beyond her grasp; displaced in one breath, one word, one conversation.

Searching for what might have been in the diary of her imagination, she finds only scattered pages and missed entries. She hopes that tomorrow will be a better day. But tomorrow was yesterday.

Sleep stands at the altar of today’s sacrifice,
Knife poised to plunge at the heart of the matter,
Knife poised to plunge at the heart of the matter,
Knife poised...

You were singing in the shower,
Very loudly,
Off-pitch,
Soap in your eyes,
Face scrunched up,
Blowing water like a bull whale,
Curtains flung to one side,
And I thought - *******, I love opera!