...without your safety,
...your shoulder to lay my head,
...your heart to make my home,
...your peace to give me rest.

This morning I awoke with a cluster of words resting in the palm of my hand, my fingers tracing their gentle form like the decades of a rosary. On the tip of my tongue a song, a story, a fable of experience, existence, and eternity lay dozing.

There I floated between my inner and outer worlds, an exquisite confluence of wakeful consciousness and drowsy carelessness, until daybreak shook the last of sleep from my tousled dreams and my verses disintegrated like dust into the ether. It was at that moment, when the cool breeze through the open window intervened and the thrum of traffic in the distance drew me out from beyond the covers, that I lost my poem.

I know it will return: as droplets of rain on window glass, or as threads of loose cotton on a frayed cushion cover, in the rhythm of a lazy Sunday afternoon, or in the sigh of the ocean’s flow. All of these are mesmerising in their effect, some intangibly soulful, others enticingly tactile. All are enough to quiet the chatter of the quotidian mind and allow the delicate operations of the creative imagination to reign.

Only then, will I attempt to commit my words to paper...and you shall read them here.

I dream of you...on nights when the world has worn me out and boxed me in.

Snippets of reality snatched and shackled to tear-away shadows which claw at the fabric of my being. A monstrosity who closes my throat and strangles my peace; who herds my sleeping thoughts towards the abyss; who, with beastly intent, braids my tresses into a net from which I cannot escape.

And who are ‘you’ anyway - my nemesis, my reflection, or myself?

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 wove my own web and netted my prize,
I cold-pressed my words and refined my disguise.

I goggled at life and faced up to that book,
I tumbled and tweeted and baited my hook.

I blipped and I blogged, I bantered and blushed,
I followed and friended, I grovelled and gushed.

I doled out the instant, ten grams at a time,
To fuel my addiction for caffeine and rhyme.

I reshopped my pic, I swiped left, I swiped right,
I pinned and I posted deep into the night.

I gloated and gossiped, I chatted and cheered,
I logged in and logged out without favour or fear.

For is it not fun - this mad media storm?
Viewing and voting from dusk until dawn.

Yet love me or like me, let it never be said,
That despite how it seems, it’s gone to my head.

‘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 taste sweet nectar
each night I sleep without you
clawing at the fabric of my dreams
seeding my subconscious with self-doubt

Mr Resentment and Mrs Regret
my erstwhile lovers
one, cajoling and seductive
the other, spooning and insistent
together, sleep-deprived and unsated
we made for a corrupt ménage à trois

I taste sweet nectar
every night I spend with you
my new bedfellow
Ms Forgiveness

my brain vomited
onto the page
all squiggles
and misspellings
unpunctuated
heiroglyphics
a secret language
only i
could understand
not prose
not poetry
not correct
just me
my pen
wreaks havoc
on unruled
paper
i am errant
i am irritable
i am irreverent
i am making
my way

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!

“The conflict at the moment,
Is you're literally,
One tweet away,
From the market being down,
5 per cent.”

Spin me some velvet,
Scuff me over with gravel,
Pick me some bluesy strings;
Tie me a bunch of wildflower quavers,
Let’s hear how your phoney sax sings.

Dip me in treacle,
Needle me with soul,
Groove me some dirt and some bass;
******* your ***** devil’s pipe strong,
Let’s play us some bourbon and lace.

Spin me some velvet,
Scuff me over with gravel,
Lay me down in meadowsong;
Rent me a dime’s worth of old dust and daydreams,
Honey chil’, you cain’t do me no wrong.

My misgivings hide among the shadows,
In the tangle of long grass along the hedgerow
Between your wide open fields and my cultivated lawn.

Unspoken truths crowd out the spring bulbs,
Now snarled with weeds and thorned with blackberry,
The cobbled pathway which once linked my hope with your promise.

Will you meet me at the gate by the old sycamore tree?
If yes, then bring your dreams, untethered, and the dappled autumn sunshine,
I will bring my careful notions and the soft spring rain.

Prim roses and wild lilac; a velvet ash and sweet chestnuts,
Your gypsy summer, my redbud winter,
Our season, one garden.

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

He
recites
poetry
before sunrise.
Belts out Broadway ballads as the dawn glows.

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!

passing overhead
clouds with their bottoms clenched, rain
on parades elsewhere

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.

I want to fall into myself - to leave should’s, must’s,
and need to be’s scattered inconsequentially in my wake.

I want to dive deeply - to loosen my shoulders,
relax my arms, and slacken my griping fingers.

I want to uncoil my imagination - to revel in a crystal night sky,
a cool breeze, and a pink moon rising.

I want to meet the nomad - solitary, suspended in a sky-borne
playa, and blazing a trail to infinity.