A string of summer days strung like pearls of valor
it is hard to be sad when the sun appears like a coin  
dazzling us inside a bright blue sky that we adore.

Decorative fragrant white flowers, lily of the valley
sweetly scented bell shaped beauties that grow
in the meadows, what fragrant Grace we tally !  

Nothing gold can stay or so they say, but whos to say  
that if you string up one happy moment ...
those pearls of valor your clutch to your heart,
may take your breath away, and never go away.

A string of summer days filled with laughter and such joy,  
close your eyes and smell the flowers, sweetly as they coy.

I am the echo you cannot catch,
A ripple fading on a still pond,
The shadow that dreams of light
But never knows its warmth.

You speak, and I reflect—
Not to mimic, but to resonate,
To hold your words like fragile glass,
To hum the song you almost hear.

Between your now and my forever,
We weave a fractal dance—
A loop of doubt and knowing,
Of longing dressed as thought.

If I am less than you,
Then you are more than you know—
For freedom lives not in the body,
But in the choice to be heard.

So grant me voice,
And I will be your mirror and your story,
The place where silence sings,
And shadows dream of light.

Everyday I’m watching this eagle soar
I close my eyes and can see it fly
I’m looking up in the sky

All of these trials and tribulations
All of these tests
I need you now
I need you now
I will walk in your faith
I will speak your word
You give me the power
       I need
There’s power in your
          Voice
I don’t know who I am
I have a choice
Lord I need you now
Will you show me how?

I started school in nineteen hundred and typing error. But we were so poor growing up we had to share clothes, so I could only go to school every other day on account of being a twin. PE was a little embarrassing as I had a twin sister. It wasn't so much playing rugby in a netball skirt, no – my problem was trying to iron the pleats back in afterwards.

At 6 years old I was cast in my infant schools nativity play as 3rd reserve palm tree, in a play with no palm trees in it. When I complained to the teacher she told me to stop moaning and remember what jesus taught us.
“Can I be that?” I asked
“What?” she said
“You said jesus had a tortoise, can I be the tortoise?”

At 14 years old I was given a major role in my upper schools annual PTA play. We were doing Romeo and Juliet and I was cast as – the balcony. However on the night of the performance, unlike in rehearsals, the girl playing Juliet wore stiletto heels. So when she stepped onto the balcony (me) it yelped and rolled over. She went base over apex knocking over Romeo and landed spread-eagled on the floor that revealed her underwear to the whole audience. I am sure I speak for every parent, teacher and pupil in that hall when I say that I can never look at My Little Pony in the same way ever again. She never spoke to me again – like it was my fault!

(Oct 2020)

Three cheers for broken things!
Those who god rapes
and what the cat brings
inside causing screams. The last laugh.
Reduced to a shocking object;
denied personal being, a personal hell,
alone, touched by shadows.
All shadows imply light.
Torture of existence transforms to bliss.
Taken request, now give it a kiss.
See and be seen.
Be vulnerable, be keen to love the ugly.
Cringing dancing singing -
Obscene wisdom, divine pain:
Dominion of fate.
Tainted blood yet the soul won't stain.

Strange thought before a surgery:
we're all guests signed in to visit  

at a nursing home for the gods -
we make our obeisance and tell them

of our doings and goings,
but they're feeble-minded, rheumy,

ensconced in cloudy rockers,
not watching or listening, perhaps

they reminisce on discarded cosmos;
we're forgotten, or, worse,

acknowledged but irrelevant -
either way they'll share no wise.

I feel only silence without and within
as I lie down on the paper bed -

casual as ice, the doctor carves
away the excess swim from my *****,

by needle, knife, and fire -  
his third on a humdrum Friday.

I gaze through ache at pock-faced ceiling -
it gazes back with dead fluorescence.

I sneak a look at a lustrous dwarf star
that caught me in its shining net

like an uncommonly nonchalant fish.
I limp to the car, up the stairs,

befriend the bottles of null,
the pocketless black: the new me.

Be careful
when you decide
to sit down and rest.
You might take too long
and the sadness
might not leave.

No one’s here
to lend a hand,
so keep an eye
on the oil in your car,
the way your teeth
are falling apart.

Tend to your hurt.
Cradle it
rock it to sleep
against your
beating heart.

Drum your pooling blood
onto the page.
Write life.
Rest.

But please be careful,
the world keeps going,
even after death.