Country nighttime turned off the world
Absolute window blacking
Any other life void-invisible
Universe shrunk snack-size
Existence is only this cab,
these tiny lights,
this fuzzing radio
One direction
Only ahead
Only these tracks

A change in rhythm signals new territory
Lower infrastructure spend
Budget acknowledged by
transitioning drum track
More toms
Double kick
More bass, but
no less hypnotising, no less soporific, no less slowing, no less…

Snap.
Driver vigilance alarm earns its keep
Pierced by safety sound needles
Bleary eyes split open
Only closed for seconds
Enough to dry 3am eyelash glue
Intermittent, intensifying battle
Open versus closed
Here versus where
Wake versus yawning, rocking, mesmerising, irresistible…

Snap.
Assistance required
Scan for options
Snoozing thermos drools its last drips onto the floor mat
Moment of silence for coffee, our absent friend
What else?
Lunch box offers carrot sticks
Sharp, crisp, smug
No help. What else? Cake.
A silent bargain
– okay calories, we’ve had our differences, but we need to pull together
Health is tomorrow, safety is now

Sleepiness shrinks and stretches place and time
There is only here
Only now
Battle and bargains
Winning and losing
Until the sun comes up

Malicious hearts will hurt the empath
As summer hurts the winter shore
Eroding buffers until burnout
Kind retreat, the only cure
--

End-of-summer beach
Seabirds’ shaky screech
Grey gulls too full to cry
Bin chooks too fat to fly
Sorry shoreline
Systems offline
Foot pounded
Rebounded
Flattened…
Shrub ripped
Wing clipped
Sand-******
Grass plucked
Party bruised
Cocktail-cruised
Cans on conches
Fish unconscious
Foam and flotsam
Wave-blind coxon
Soda can crab shacks
Neon pink algae tracks
Whelk shell graveyard
Absent lifeguard
**** platoons
Naked dunes
Cheapened
Weakened
Exposed…
Tidal hangover
Coastal leftover
Erosion potluck
Sitting sea-duck
Strong incoming storm surge
Winter solstice land purge
Quick and shifty beach thieves
Cyclone tempest mouth-breathes
Recalcitrant brackish aggressor
Intransigent briny transgressor
Suspensions of sediments modified
Walling and breakwaters compromised
Over, back, and whitewash makers
Bubble, rubble, boil and breakers
Weathered, not weathering
Tempered, not tempering
More block than gavel
More grave than gravel
All prisoner no guard
Grain short of a shard
Receding sand-line drift
Intensive shoreface-lift
Patient unresponsive
Highly hypertensive
Code cerulean blue…
Plant encouragement
Shoreline nourishment
Sand transplant
Grass implant
Healing hiatus
to homeostasis
Swell subsiding
King Tide presiding
Prince Neap succeeds
Warm court accedes
Managed realignment
Sanctuary assignment
Steadfast protections
Timid reconnections
Gentle, careful, soft,
and slow…
  A new beach visitor
  dips their toe

We are clouds
individual
and collective by nature
changeless-ever-changing
drifting into our eyes
and across our minds

We cannot live in
photos or paintings
inspiring but hanging
dormant like billboards
and traffic signs

Dark clouds awaken
when angry
fire and fury
torrents of rain
hail damaging

Then Zephyr comes
to appease their anger
    ~god’s of the sky~
peace treaties pending

She often drifts in like
an angel
ahead of a storm front
thunder and lightning
her silhouette
bringing in less
threatening clouds to
comfort us when storms
leave us angry cold and wet

At times even darker
clouds hang ominously
and high winds are surely threatening war
then out the blue
allies flank our enemy
blowing away
the fiery vaporous Thor

We float into wintertime
into its storyline
Drifting in and out of space
and time through seasons
of wind hail rain or shine
(essence of
our connected
and interconnected minds)

Billowing Cumulonimbus
Dark Nimbostratus
Thin Sirius basking in sunshine
Shapeless grey clouds of snow
Cold drizzle reigns

Funnel clouds
cyclone
monsoon
hurricane
typhoon
bursting through
atmospheric membranes

We can be moody
boasting large volumes
but revealing far-less mass

Passively aggressive
boasting less volume
but revealing a lot of mass

We are clouds
changeless-ever-changing
drifting into our eyes
and across our minds.

~
I.
Killing Mary Poppins
with a spoonful of sugar,
the sugar from the medicine
on the other side of town,
the town called Silent Hedges
And A Bit Of Fluff.

II.
Only a display model,
her name is Marmalade;
skin white like the moon,
she wears her ****** stranger dress;
one of her sisters is dying,
the other never lived;
God is a far off concept,
the fuchsia colored ball on
an overhead power grid
points her way to salvation.

III.
Morning became something else:
bright decline,
cold things start to burn,
tragic saxophone
among the beckoning,
everything's a symptom:
tax exiles, imperialists,
girls talking nitrous
--mouths full of soil,
Virginia Reel around the fountain
(do-si-do),
ready to buy up impossibles
as the dominoes fall.

IV.
Memory is a chemical
to the girl who cried champagne,
like ceiling stars
during the prodigal summer,
she played the game
on all fours,
and found a drawer
full of quarantine polaroids,
some with blood in her mouth,
others, of rain on her birthday.
~