Have you ever seen ‘La Vie en Rose?’
The little sparrow runs from room to room
weeping for the dead love of her life.

Every cloud has a silver lining
and who cares about cancer when there’s music to consider?

                  Someone’s noisily nibbling nachos and scrunching sweet wrappers nearby.

No movies for us in a Cadillac at the big chill;
instead we watched the world slip past as we sat still.

The lake in the valley, sun drenched skin,
we lay, bellies to earth on soft grass.

A whisker as white as snow pushes through your chin demanding to be known,
I am in love with this hair.

I felt you might die too and I’d run from room to room
calling your name and you would not come.

The price of popcorn increases.

The woods are lovely dark and deep
and I have no promises to keep.

The snow will melt soon and I will hesitate,
leave it too late to play in it.

Black and white from gold and blue,
branches blacken the skyline like veins,
the bloodless rhythms of a barren land.

Can this be the same world?

Hiding and watching snowflakes swirling,
every hot breath quickly unfurling
blankets the window’s glass
as warmth from the fire makes my hair start curling.

I stay in writing these lines
with a white crunch of dread.
Fear of the cold, fear of the pines
fear of passing hours, fear of these times.

Fire crackles behind as a teacup steams,
a book invites me to a world of dreams
none of them my own.

An empty room that’s full of things.

Crackling comets colliding
and inside a stiff sprung box Earth lay dying.
There are more synaptic connections in a brain
than there are atoms in the universe.
Crusted blood cracked and crusted crumbling to the floor
and there grew treasonous trees,
unnatural nature.
Life sprung from life sprung from death,
The matter, what’s the matter, it never dies just changes form.
Each separate spot, treaded like an old stitch rethreaded
dinosaurs, plants, people passing breath after breath.
There will always be something left.
And we have no roots, no ties to an earth, free to roam
like old lions, lying and lying about.
No matter how long you remember being here, your cells are only seven years old, held by a membrane of change, arranged in a format that remains unexplained.
The eye of a needle can only go so small and dogs see the world through smell.
Will the people remember what we remember?
A collective consciousness of all history encompassed.

I watch as a rising bloom has turned to rose,
nature spreads like butter as we raise a toast.

Eight years old
the little girl skips
to the garden
to feed the rabbit.
“Georgie is cold!”
Her heart grows old,
she learns of death
and the stopping of breath
and heat,
The little rabbit’s feet
are ugly now
and frightening to
behold.
Not in heaven
but buried under soil
I saw you lift him with the
*****.
It looked undignified
soft fur (enclosed)
in mud,
and then you patted it down
like you would a pet
and thought I would
forget.

In vintage shops
little rabbit feet once used for dusting, dainty women
hang.
They sway like leaves.

Paw prints on cheeks,
the blood has turned to pink powder.

A birthday party,
I turn as I lift this velvet curtain
unveil this night for you,
Sixty circus freaks unravel down the hill
like a coloured handkerchief
of liquid laughter,
all singing the circus theme.
The only tears are drawn on
and the smiles cut up to the ears,
a tap dance in a bathroom,
manic movements,
a tumble back up the hill.
Cherry liquor is juggled, smuggled around the room
to a clown sporting harlequin pantaloons.
I laugh, drink, talk,
like a mime I copy the idea of human.
A sudden disconnection of sometimes weirdness envelops,
I become an audience member,
able only to watch the show,
a speechless mime with my face in shadow.
A desire to shout into empty biscuit barrel silences
I test ringmaster reactions,
to get back in I perform in a freak show.

But my eyes catch eyes, a timed grasping on a social trapeze,
we swing above a net of old ties.

A cough cough chorus of a sickly bunch,
germs fly as we do.
We’re all bunched in, no room to move when eating lunch.
**** a cherry drop so your head won’t pop.
We are nowhere going somewhere,
we have to keep on telling ourselves.
The weight of a cold increases with gravity.
Puffed eyes swollen, greasy hair,
like a drowned fish I too breathe poison.
The food *****
back to the cherry drop,
back to the ground.

Landing’s like submerging from dank water,
I need air, I need air, I need air.
Invisibly delectable
droplets of juice on an apple.

The word oxygen is refreshing.

My legs walked me onto the plane
to my 3ft square.

Like cogs in a clock, we gathered in time.

A cat stalks amongst stalks;
monkeys like old men, fingers unpick
your banana hands, curious and careful.
Too much expression.
Don’t worry, have a curry.
And from a coach window glimpses of a land
where a skeleton boy sleeps or lies dead under palm.
And the red earth chokes.
Follow the waterfall to mango pickle
down river to a jungle boogie rhythm
you ain’t ever heard before.
Cobra skins and coy carp,
the sound of cicadas amasses.
A stand still in traffic, its ‘crush’ hour
its okay to beep even if it will never get you anywhere.
A treasure trove of trinkets, a myriad of jewels.
All you see is money,
all I see is you wanting money.
Dusty rags from sandy bags, the face of
desperation is ugly.
Temples carved into caves
as markets coloured like an artist’s palette.

An elephant’s eyes say more than this poem could.