some people seeking perfection,
their dream in music
decline.

have their own reality,
ideals, unreasonable
requests.

we found the shade,
missed any remarkable
rainfall, ate the cherries,
at the royal welsh.

no are no demands,
no disappointments.

these are the days,
a repetition.

sbm.

I live in the bottom of a tea-cup,
the basin of an English town
that is no more remarkable than any other English town.
It has little flair,
too much submissiveness,
many characters but no character.
It is a stencilled town convinced that it is something more
than margins.

Front gardens are filled with bits and pieces
of broken things
that are perpetually leaving.
Cardboard boxes,
disconnected fridges,
unfinished patios,
wellingtons that have paused to collect the clouds.
The crocuses have frostbite
and the lawns are fraying at the edges
like muddy carpet.
As you follow the road the houses get bigger
and their front doors get shabbier.
Paint peels like sunburnt skin
and the road stains yellow.

The old and the new mix obscenely;
two girls, tied at the elbow,
crack their feet on the sound
of their sisters’ high heels slapping paving stones.
Most people have got extensions
that have left their house in two pieces,
the bricks never seeming to meet.
Gingham table cloths hang out to dry,
a red double-decker teeters on a corner,
biked teenagers slip through the net of the Friday sky.

It’s a green-ish evening
and the clouds are strung like DNA blots
around the blurring sun.
The light’s not strong enough to dry your bones but,
when you look at it,
it seems to have exceeded any outline.
A slab of sky is golden.

The allotment is rows upon rows upon rows of bamboo canes,
browned like apple cores.
Chicken wire and faded Wendy houses
slouch upon their soil trenches.
It is a patchwork of mediocrity;
the beige and the brown and the grey
overtake the green.
Tin cans stud the place
like piercings on the body of an ex-punk;
only dead things grow
and the colours have been switched to mute.

There’s a market on Saturdays
where strawberries will cost you the moon
and where egg boxes are recycled
until they drip in the rain.
My grandparents remember my town in its embyonic stages,
my parents remember when it still was framed with local business,
I remember it when Shakeaway was a fruit and vegetable store
that sold palenta on Wednesdays.
My town is locked in a cycle of self-improvement
that it never seems to benefit from.
It is infitely greyed
and nothing more or less than ordinary.
Boys with blackheads pretend that they understand parkour
and the haberdashery closes down.
Each month, the window displays alter to no avail
and the dust sinks a little closer
to the pages we’re constantly trying to turn.

I live in the bottom of a tea-cup
and I never stop trying to read insubstantial fortunes
from the dregs I’ve left behind.

The shaking hand leaves ink trails on the Paper,
Like blue veins showing through pale skin.
The whisper of his words lost between
The Cough and the Death Rattle as he begins.
Words whispered appear like ghosts upon the Page
No Laurels, No printing, No Publishing of this old Sage
Just a stack of Paper to Mark a lifetime of memories.
To show up at an estate sale pawed over by Curiousity
Shaking but determined he pens down the Paper
Another Document to be filed in a box for later
Like Dreams of Fantasy and tales of Enchantment...
Shaking Hands write, This is my last will, and testament...JMF

Each time I catch you glancing at me from across the halls
i smile and run to you
you embrace me in a hug
gentle but firm
and i don't ever want to let go.
I just want this moment to freeze
and there is no one else but the two of us
and may it forever remain this way

Of this, my heart so eagerly embraced
The plans of youth in dreams retraced
And in that song of once forgotten fire
A burning now of long quenched desire.

See the trees standing tall and austere?
The meadow grass with flowers appear.

Split rail fence
Winding path
Stone wall
Signs of a life,
Proof of it all

The poet seeks to recollect
Through phrases in earnest to reflect
But the pen, in solitude rejects

Through wasted years of hopeful dream
I've not set foot in a single stream

Of longing
Of bitterness
Of regret

These will be this poet's epitaph.

We are all one
recycled energy
fluxing in and
                         out
               of existence.
We are but waves,
pulling each other
under, and bursting
into the light with
burning lungs,
flowing through the motions
of
daily life.

Sink or swim?