i am over without the easy|
sometimes a cup without a saucer|
often shoes without socks|
but mostly i am legs running and arms whirling

in a hurry to escape the day|
in a rush to fill my head with bouncy thoughts|
in a flurry of wishing flat words into fantastic stories|
of turning grey into cerulean, and rust into claret

i am questions with more than one answer|
questions which play on my mind|
answers which go around and around|
like petals of eccentricity whelmed by an eddy|
and trying to escape the day in a hurry

A velvet topography,
Of ridges and furrows,
Undulations of light and shade,
A land born of upheaval,
And tectonic collisions,
With a fault line for a spine.

Let me fall
Deeply into the heart
Of the wanderer,
Under the dappled skin
Into the belly of the thing
Heavy and warm;
The hermit and the outcast
Is met in me
By the stomp of a hoof,
The shifting
Of weight
As he steadies himself;
I look down at my feet
Aware of toes and heels
Colliding with the ground.

Our initials chiselled,
With a crown cork bottle cap,
Into the trunk of our favourite tree,
Will the world wonder in time to come,
Whatever happened to you and me?

At this time of year,
it seems that everyone
is looking for a piece of blue sky
with a little bit of green;

Among the frazzle and the dazzle,
the trash and the tinsel,
a piece of themselves
that they misplaced;

Down the back of the sofa,
back in the day
when blue sky grew on trees
and green summers were forever.

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.

Hope to be...a hopeless romantic...hoping for the best...when all hope is lost.

Hope, I’ve always maintained, is like waiting with enthusiasm for something that is never going to happen. Such dedication!

And then I second-guessed myself.

Does it matter if what is hoped for eventuates or remains perpetually elusive? Is the practice of hope an event in itself; the lift in the shoulders, the spring in the step, the intangible high which gets us through? Maybe, that’s what hope is, no more or less than that. A survival mechanism of the highest order. An antidote to despair and disappointment which resuscitates the spirit, revitalises our connection to the world we live in, and inspires our momentum forward.

Hope is a self-generated experience which, with a select few thoughts or words, we can create for our own or for another’s benefit at any time and under any circumstances, irrespective of what is gained or lost in actuality. Granted, our individual perspective and personal biography directs our ability to conjure this sweet synaptic syntax, but with practice it can be ours for the taking.

Hope allies itself with truth and makes a friend of acceptance. It recognises what is possible and what is not. Hope has no expiry date but what we hope for does, and as such, hopes can be re-expressed, discarded, or adjusted in concert with our emotional evolution. Only with the advantage of hindsight can we declare a hope false or lost, and so often this declaration is made by an observer rather than the affected party.

Hope will always precede the outcome to which it is applied, a little like predicting the future, and therein lies the rub. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as false hope, only that which is falsely applied. It is up to us to discern the difference.

Pages inked in memory of days which deserve no backward glance - no dwelling upon, no minutes added to their allocated twenty-four hours - except for the fact that I have breathed their air, lived their promise, and named them for myself.

…dawn breaks like a blow to the heart.

O, feckless dart of immeasurable delight!
Wouldst thou direct elsewhere your flight,
And refute my rival’s gentleman claim,
That he be immune to Cupid’s aim.

His smug sobriety remains intact,
His pages blithe and matter-of-fact,
Where my poor pen is inked with woe,
And ****** to hell by quiver and bow.

O, mischievous boy do grant my request!
Whether modest maid or comely *****,
His downfall ensured by one bold kiss,
Shoot low, shoot high, but do not miss.

White nights, grey days,
Phosphorus and gin;
Graffiti-laden pavements,
Diamond rain and paraffin.

Chalk dust reveries,
Aerosols and spit;
Zero-hour freeways,
Magnetic parapets.

City high, city low,
Monoliths in drag;
Silent spaces, dwelling places,
A hoody and a bag.

Freestyle evangelists,
Salvation strikes a pose;
Train tracks, kitchen hacks,
The rapture and the snow.

The opposite of end-stopped
Poetry; the trick with enjambment
Is to never complete a sentence, phrase, or thought
Within a single line of verse; but instead allow
The syntactic unit to run on
Unexpectedly, like a distracted self-drive tourist
Attempting to navigate a multi-lane freeway
Without indicating

And my uncle says charmingly - as always:
‘It seems like only yesterday, mon petit chou.’

And - for the umpteenth time - my brother-in-law shakes my hand off:
‘Wow, congrats on the DOF position!’

And - like clockwork - my best friend puts a ******-happy arm around my shoulders:
‘To be perfectly honest, y’know like, you don’t look a day over thirteen, cross my heart.’

And I think to myself (******-offedly but politely, as you never know who’s telepathic around here):
’I could sit here fixed to this very patch of fading upholstery for the next 365 days with a flute of champers in my hand and still travel as far as you all believe I have, achieve as much as you unfailingly give me credit for, and look as fresh-faced as my oldest nephew...apparently.’

And then it occurs to me:
’Beneath the ill-contrived compliments and the misplaced confidence; despite their infallible ability to misconstrue my every word and complete disinterest in what and why I read out aloud for a living. They turned up. As they do every year. And we annoy each other. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. Santé!’

Did you decide who I was before or after you spoke to me?

Did you decide to speak to me - or not - because of how I was dressed, what I looked like, my job, my education, my choice of beverage, my height, my accent, or my scintillating conversation with your plus one about the benefits of suburban parking spaces?

And who are you? Do you know? Are you sure? Did you dress yourself or did your date choose that sweater for you? Did you grow that ironic beard for her? Are you happy in your work, or just pretend to be to keep the peace? Did you miss taking up that scholarship because your family moved out of state?
Did someone ask you to hold their glass while they whipped to the loo? Do you slouch to compensate for those years of dance lessons which make you look too...straight? Are you trying to hide that southern twang? Do you talk ******* when conversing with strangers and tend to come across as a complete *****?

I thought so, go figure!

I am drowning,
I am returned.

In the flow,
On the ebbing tide.

I am drowning,
I am returned.

Wrong-shapened and unfamiliar to myself.
Overwhelmed as much by the experience, as by my release from it.
But ready, ever ready, for the next wave.
Which may sink me - what are the chances?
Which may settle me on soft, sun-dried sand further up the line.

What are the chances?

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.

O rapturous heart! O blighted spirit!
Content and malcontent, the same.
Seize not upon thy hapless circumstance to ponder,
But on Fortune’s fickle favour renew thy claim.

For love is best served when least remembered,
An inclination immediate and true.
No rank aftertaste of bitter bile for me,
‘Tis sweet Aphrodite I petition: ‘Grant me my due!’

Flavia swore as the heavy earthenware pitcher slipped from her hands and crashed onto the uneven flagstones. As she knelt in the puddle of tepid water and started gathering in the pieces, she heard the rapidly approaching footfall of an armed legionary.

‘Leave that now, there’s no time. We ride for York immediately.’
‘But mea domina...’
‘The Wall is breached. Hurry, puella, or she'll start without you!’

Flavia picked up her sodden skirts and ran.

                                                           ­  §

I held my breath as the last piece of the Corbridge ewer slid smoothly into place and wondered at the exquisitely crafted motif which encircled the body of this ancient vessel. A procession? A cavalcade? Curious, if not for the men-at-arms, I would have thought it a pageant. And there in a covered wagon a noble woman looking back at a young girl standing on the steps of a villa holding her hem in her hands.

Susie Saviour is a Bond girl
From Weymouth-Turf-On-Sea
A swish, a sway; a fist, a fray
And home in time for tea.

She scuba dives for pleasure
Downdashious to her core,
But only when the flags are out
And never far from shore.

A beauty queen, a lisome lass,
A femme fatale, a flirt;
Serves martinis with a swizzle stick
This sweet assassin in a skirt.

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.