Sometimes I am the whip-flailing horseman charging into tomorrow
On the fevered hooves of the present while
Safe under my cloak against sunset-red clouds of kicked-up dust.

Sometimes I am the frantically zigzagging prey half-blind with fear
Cursing the double-dealing wind that lashes against my hide
And feeds my scent to the ravenous hounds of the past.

Perhaps I am both hunter and quarry in a simultaneous paradox
Which explodes from the shattered fiction of single-mindedness
Into fresh awareness brilliant and dark and incomprehensibly vast.

For all I know I could even be a sprite tossed haphazardly in a Bermuda Triangle
Above fault lines where yesterday's memories collide into the future
To birth strange whirlpools of thought stirred by phantom hands
Waiting for me to join them below among hulking carcasses of rust.

Orange earplugs, pill-shaped, one pair:
for use when pretending the neighbours' furniture-dragging is comforting invariably fails.

White humidifier, cylindrical, spewing vapour:
twenty minutes per cycle. Each manual reset is a life lost and there is no Player Two.

Day curtains, thick and heavy, one set:
to evade the pincer of lunar Cyclops' glare and unblinking orange streetlights.

E5:E2: the projection clock spits on the wall, fresh red and upside down:
it's almost midnight. I shall feign death until the whirring in my head dies.

Darkened blue splotch
Swabbed with remnants of night
Liquid opal slants
Almost vertically
Shimmering through car window
Of grey-tinted dawn.

Slip into the viscous stream of starched fabric knowing I belong not here, ever the dissonant clef rattling its bar

Presence coaxes the parched throat but slakes not the gut's burn. I have learnt to swallow the fireballs I fear may wayward fly

Lactic oblivion strains the milk, scrubbing out taints of blossom-red

Speak, so their shunted breaths return trembling to the lips. There is nothing to see, hear, this drum echoes with ghosts you fathom not

Twice weekly I cross over to the past, fleeting high-breasted gryphon among the bright-eyed hatchlings. Then the summons of the bell

Reality strikes as lightning; the boom that trails it is the singed silence of the mute mind

sonatas soulful, soothing, softly somnolent:
i kneel in surrender to their swells —
slipping under the spray, slow submerge of sound

soaking my eardrums
sealing sight
the sea’s silence deceives, concealing

songs so solemn, solace’s sorcery suddenly suspends:
sorrowful solipsism sublimates —
i seek stupors soporific as soliloquys

Two-meter corridor framed by encroaching ceiling,
grime-streaked bricks of once-white pillars on the right,
dim-lit concrete floor underfoot, distinctly squelchy,
lathered with a millimeter of mud and sweat.
Stifled night drafts stir, disturbed,
by the threat of insidious humidity.
On the left, faint whisperings of revelry
escape from the tangle of choking throes
of grinding, grey-grilled gates.

Desolation comes like some huge gaping maw
It swallows you whole, smiles and laughter and all
Makes you want to curl up and cry your eyes raw
Down into insecurity's depths you fall

But at every tunnel's end there will be light
A rainbow smiling above after each storm
Beauty in the dark corners graced by your sight
Cold winter days end in a bed soft and warm

You have strength yet, untapped deep within your mind
Feed embers of hope with the sparks from your friends
Above all, love yourself and soon you'll find
You're just fine (and there's no need to make amends)

You see the fruits upon the trees
But nothing of the seeds
The painful rise above the ground
The strangling of the weeds

You gaze out upon the lazy lakes
And hear not the rushing noise
That river water and gravel makes
Feeding it from far away

You simply love the summer rain
But know not of the way
The tears of gods precipitate
Someplace above the gray

You look in wonder at glacial ice
Not knowing how all the time
It shudders and crumbles and it dies
From the burden of itself

I am the earth; I quake and heave
You see mere pools, not reservoirs
Of seeping fury when I breathe
My violent anger from my floors

Breeze sighs coyly, ever the temptress
Carressing stalks of intoxicated flowers in contented stupors
Drooling dewdrops, yet virginial to sobriety

Paint on the tiled driveway dresses in dawn
Whiter than white, patches of sky afoot
Wet smell of earth the last reminder of night

7.03 upslope scarce affords a glance
Worlds of wonders skipped in every stride
Morning birds shriek from their green citadels, messengers of war

Heart sighs. There is much cause to surcease.
Mind grips the reins tighter. Perfect Monday weather.

Beach dusk is romance.
Sprightly smooth limbed figures
Barefooted on warm sand,
Bathing in pink sunsets,
Watching tragic beauty descend
With clasped hands.

Standing in the middle of the sea,
The sun looks no bigger than it did from land,
Ghostly noose reeling it down to the horizon.
As it approaches the water starts to boil,
Calcium leaches from seashells
Unbearably hot.
Somewhere out there someone's mother cries
And blood stains the skies.
Complicit in our sight we cover our ears
Standing in the middle of the sea.

Beach dawn is ******.
Footsteps trickle back onto sand
Still hot from night's inferno,
Each grain with a distant soul.
Their bones line our shores,
Flowers in an eternal summer.

It was the sea shallow
Deep with sediment
Memory; adrift in tide
Sand moats and small dams
Crumbling with each pull
Rebuilt before the last sunset
Backwash - cracked shells and polished stones
Some pretty in dull coats
Sea spray salt deposits
Woundless but itching
Caving mounds silenced
Nightfall exorcises the waves
Ghosts surge and cease: lunar
Ebb and tide resumes anew
I shall set down the *****

The playground swing creaks between the hollow trees
No different from the shadows they cast in gloom
Life leaks from grey roots in drops and dribbling streams
Gone like the silence in the wind's raptured screams

We used to play on it from spring to winter
Seeking reassurance in its permanence
Through bitter frost and rain there it would stay
A reminder of the games we used to play

This seat has been barren for too many years
These long-rusted chains on either side crave blood
They curl into nooses and dangle like snakes
To embrace your body before it awakes

I return once more,
to where the rivulets run dry,
the horizon flattens into nothingness
and the ravens cry.

I tread back across
to where the waters once ran deep,
and watch my feet sink while I hear my
winged companions weep.

Scrabbling in the dirt,
I become painfully aware
of every inch of my exposed skin under
the naked sky's stare.

There is nothing here,
nothing but the wind's icy bite
gnawing at my cheeks with the frozen breath of
overflowing spite.

Then, the distant growl
of thunder from just beyond sight;
it knells for all these dust-swept dunes I've built yet
whispers of delight.

I may have returned
to this dead oasis again,
but now after all this time I'm finally
waiting for the rain.