THE FOREGONE CONCLUSION OF THE KISS-ABOUT-TO-BE

Ahhh, yes...I see!
The kiss-about-to be!

The had-to-happen
that hadn't happened

as yet
but. . .

Ahhh, yes. . .
the "yet/but" bit.

That curious blend of
not yet & already.

The foregone conclusion
that hadn't concluded.

What could be put down to
basic human fear and

an inherent male stupidity.

So let's look for a scientific solution.

By brazenly placing the lips
nearer and nearer with a greater

degree of boldness and the radioactive
element of sheer desperation

we find that the lips of both
the male and female component

brought face to face
both breaths mingling

the kiss-about-to-be
has no choice but to

- happen.

Et voilà

MY KIND OF POETRY

she leaned drunkenly
against the universe as if all
the stars were there to support her

her hair unruly
as an orchestra tuning up
always the lost chord of a curl

her voice rumpled
like clothes that had been
slept in for a week

her mind always
the proverbial rabbit caught
in the headlights of life

but boy could that girl
rumbarumbarumba
"She's my kind of poetry!"

A WOMAN IS CRYING

In the next room
a woman is crying

a moon
perches upon an hotel sign

unmoved

as a new millennium
dawns

as bright as neon

the woman
still crying

her unknown
despair

shifting silently
from one century to another

human grief
unchanged

from age
to age.

A woman is crying.

COME VIENE...VIENE!
(WHAT COMES...COMES!)

The sun is
preaching her sermon

to the town
of Praiano

that clings to the cliffs
in wonder.

Here in her hand
of light & water

she tells the parables
of pebbles.

One wave waves to another
as she walks upon the water.

Bells undress Time
disrobe her of her hours.

Lemons grow
big-bellied on branches

pregnant
with yellow.

The juice
of the Future

praying in a church
of trees.

Here, a congregation
of butterflies & bees.

Grapes dream of being
turned into wine.

Figs ripen
with pleasure.

The gods of pagan times
survive

disguised as statues.

I only believing
in the religion of

a woman's
laughter.

And even now
as darkness

grows
upon the rose

it's as if
the sunlight never leaves

only changes
colour

and the sunlight darkens
only to blossom

into the next morning
in love with Time.

AFTER THE ROW

Built an over large snowman
on your front doorstep

&
hid behind it.

Rang your doorbell

until you were
annoyed  by it.

“Yes...yes! ”
you flung open the door

to be confronted
with a snowman

telling you
he loved you

until slowly

your heart
began

to melt.

*

l

IT WAS A NIGHT WHEN FLIGHT HADN'T YET BEEN INVENTED

He had a face
like a FOR SALE

sign that
had been there for ever

with the kind of moustache
that smart-aleck kids

would draw upon
a poster of the Mona Lisa.

His eyes were kind of Dalísh
as when the great painter

announced his
own greatness.

Behind him
a yellow half-moon

posed
perched upon his head

as if it was his
own peculiar particular pet

otherwise he was
nondescript

a no-one
that no one would notice.

An announcement announced
that the flight to Dublin

would be delayed
indefinitely.

Outside the snow was
impossible.

It was a night
when flight

hadn't yet been
invented

and only snow
took to the air.

I only noticed him
because a tear

silently and slowly
trickled down

his left cheek
and hung suspended there

for a century it seemed
before falling on the book

before him
that he wasn't reading

only holding as if
in defence against the world

and I wondered what
his grief was.

MIDNIGHT AT ST. MARKS


'Felicta...Felicta! '

I smile
to see the sound

of my words
translated into breath

the ghost of the sound
dancing before me

on the cold night air
pierced with stars

watch as my words
travel halfway across the world

translated into
the little breeze

that disturbs
those loose strands of hair

that you absentmindedly
put back in place

& smile
& wonder

...why?

'Felicta...Felicta! '

RUNNING NAKED ALONG THE CLIFFS OF MOHER IN A THUNDERSTORM

She ran on
into the storm

the last shreds of her
designer clothes

shrieking out to sea
terrifying the gulls

'I'm free...I'm free! '
she screamed nakedly.

The divorce papers(that
had finally come through)
tore themselves apart &

flew...flew...to the four

winds unfurling her fury
(laced with lightnings)

she conducted the storm
in a fine frenzy.

Nature's orchestra
drawing her to this

crescendo of self.

'****** tourists! '
bellowed the blustering

one man & his dog.

GOING LOCO

the train screamed
impatient to be off
we watch the station pull away

the train huffed & puffed
placing cinders in girls' hair
belching soot on boys' faces

train throwing
a scarf of smoke
over its chugging carriages

cows running by
so fast
the world a blur of green

the train chuffed
to be chasing the landscape
crossing that bridge when

it came to it
destination achieved
downloading passengers to the station

FALLING INTO THE PAST



the tick tick of the bike
a dog barks
letter on a Welcome mat

the midnight tick of time
the house sighs
Dad's whistle

ambushed by the smell
of honeysuckle
I fall into the Past

red barn
blue sky
a summer to last forever

Caruso 78
I listen to the scratches
like Time trying to sing along

I kiss the whorl
of a fingertip then
the all of you

your body
drifting away from me
on a tide of hurt

'I don't like the way
your eyes
touch me! '

starlings fly up
I walk upon close bitten grass
a sheep laughs

a car rusts on the beach
the roofless house
looks out to sea

the sea is sleeping
I watch it breathing
wonder what it's dreaming

the house hunkers down
its window eyes
gaze upon the coming storm

crouching under a cloud
a mountain
frightened by the storm

walking upon
the meniscus of sleep
unable to dive in

& here you are
years later looking like
an out-of-focus-photo of your self

Reviewing: THE SITUATION

Somehow, summer
was losing it.

Forgetting her lines.
Missing her cues.

Putting on a well
below par performance.

Having to be
prompted.

Becoming a bit of
an embarrassment .

Then: one day summer
just didn't show.

The day panicked.

Autumn, who had been
understudying summer

declared to God
she could play her.

She knew the part by heart
word perfect.

Could play her
in her sleep.

So, Autumn
far too early in the run

put in a performance
that was - well. . .

that was just
not summer.

Stars began to look
more brittle...colder.

Leaves bled
red.

Couples cuddled
closer

more for warmth
than...the other thing.

Me? Who
had a front row seat

up at the old lake
put in a tired review

"They just don't
make a summer

like they
used to!"

LEARNING TO BE. . .

been dead a week
before I knew it

thought the world had gone
a bit transparent

people walking through me
like ghosts

only I was the ghost
just couldn't get used to it

bit boring being dead
nothing much to do

except hang around old haunts
and try to remember who

the hell I am
who I used to be

and what

happens now
I mean is there a part 2 or what

or is this it

and when does Heaven arrive
or

does it?

I watch the rain
falling through me

my 3 year old cries
her tears hurt me

I want to cry but
- can't:

CARDINAL BALUE'S CAGE

I have fallen out of myself
like a naked soul embarrassed to be seen
without a body

I seem to no longer exist
just thoughts flying about
without a human to nest in

I don't know if I mean
anything anymore
the world is losing its grip on me

I am down
to the dregs of myself
half a human being if you know what I mean

the world has become so
2-D to me
& I a one-dimensional being

oh how I long for to be
3-D
when the world was in love with me

I feel like Cardinal Balue
imprisoned in a cage for 6 years
by Louis the something or other

DRAWING DOWN THE MOON

her witch's broom
hiking up her micro mini
logo on her knickers: "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!"

"Me? Witch or *****...which?"
"Bit of both!" she supposes
"Only kidding...defo - good witch!"

miniscule clutch purse
"What...can possibly...fit in that?"
"******!" she mouths silently

"I LOVE YOU!" she laughs lustily
with a visible
exclaimination mark

BLITZKREIG

Love has
broken out

borders have been crossed.

This the sovereign  state
of I

has been invaded by
hugskissescaresses

the senses over-
whelmed

all reasoning
annihilated

Love has been
declared

I...!
totally

surrender.

TIME FOR TEA

“Hi!” said the Ancestors
knocking on my door.

They were late by a couple of
thousand years or more/

“We’re no one
that you know

we’re from the long long ago!”

They spoke in a voice
made of silence.

“We made you up
( so to speak )

and we just thought we would
come & see you for ourselves!”

One had a singing bird
trapped in her chest

( just like my mother )

an other had an exploding
dandelion heart

( just like the Da ).

Some were pure myth
through & true.

Some untouched by time.

They were made up
of all the bits & pieces

of the “me”
recognised as “I”

So this is how
I had come to be

“Sit down!” I said.

“I’ll put on the tea.”

COME AWAY O HUMAN CHILD!

Little daughter
even before you were

(conceived by me)

I dreamed of your head
on a pillow

dreaming your own dreams.

I staggered from day to day
drunk with amazement
amazed with astonishment

that you were
going to be

counting days
eagerly

until you were.

Now, that we have
lost you

slipping unbelievably
somehow between

our dreams
and your dreams

(Heaven lost in the dark)

I think of you
as you were going to be

your head dreaming
on a pillow

my head at rest beside your head.

Little daughter
who never was

Oh how I miss you!

THAT'S...one small step. .  .

A common garden
puddle

flecked with stars
& seated at its center

a naked moon
bathing her self

caught unawares
without her clouds

a Goddess fallen
among mere mortals

but at my footfall
they all scatter to the heavens

in a splash
ripples clinging to

my right blue
suede shoe.

"...IT HAS PLEASED THE GOD OF BATTLES..."

General Dan is visiting
his leg

at the Military Museum
for 50 years now.

The one he lost
at Gettysburg.


Walt is visiting the wounded
and the many dying

at the Patent Office
press ganged into a makeshift

hospital
in glass cases

patents stare
at patients

"every kind of invention
it ever occured..."

the poet remarks
"into the mind of man


...to conceive."

A soldier laughs out loud
even as the President visits.

He has been handed
a religious tract

"The Sin of Dancing"
he who

has
no legs.

A crop of amputated feet
grows higher and higher.

How human are
a man's toes.

A dead Confederate
is dragged into position

to make
a better photograph.

Bushfires rage
through the Wilderness.

The scream of the wounded
being burnt alive

begging to be shot
"Did we or did we not

do all
that men could do>"

Shot through the socket
the eye bulges out

both brothers and
yet both survive

Microscopium constellation
looks down upon

this world of men
amazed to find itself

nailed to the Museum's floor
by some man's art

sharing the space
with General Dan's lost leg

that still lives on
in its glass case.

Obscure and barely visible
to the naked eye

just like the constellation
of the dead.

Man now
in a museum

falls asleep with
a book upon his lap

"Lost, Missing and
Troublesome Stars"

Like a musket shot
it wakes the sleeper up

turns heads as
1863

becomes
2003

MY MOTHER'S HANDS

My mother’s hands

washing potatoes
washing kids
washing pans.

My mother’s hands
on bitterly cold days

******* yet more washing
on a pregnant line

the line growing nothing but
nappies

her hands blind
with the cold.

My mother’s hands
ironing clothes
ironing clothes
ironing countless knickers

for my seven sisters.

My mother’s hands
taking my hands
in hers

such love...such laughter!

My mother’s hands
patting talcum powder

on another baby’s ***.

Mum being Mum.

Me, kissing

my mother’s hands

for all...they’ve done.

AS ABOVE SO BELOW

Death manifests itself:

'Are you my death? '

Cleopatra asks.

'Ask the asp! '

Death laughs.

'Are you my death? '

Cleopatra asks.

'Don't ask! '
whispers the asp

as the candle flame flickers

and silences kisses the dark.

sun that old King Midas
stretching out an evening hand
turning concrete to gold

MAN HAS SO MUCH FARTHER TO GO WITHIN HIMSELF

the moon
bounded along

leaping from roof
top to roof top

keeping up with the car
like a pet

that had been left behind
racing after its master

not understanding how
it had been forgotten

the night had a slight
July taste to it

I almost expected the moon
to bark.

It ran into a rather large cloud
that engulfed it

like a giant white corpuscle
ingesting a microbe

we never knew if
the moon survived

as we swerved left
and left it behind

only that there was a howling
that went on and on

*

“We are going to the moon that is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.”

― Anaïs Nin

Ahhhh Time
that old illusion.

I sidestep it
& hide

in contemplation.

Time looks everywhere
for me but I

step into the silence
keeping perfectly still.

Time looks baffled
as a stopped watch.

Days fall like leaves
from a calendar

in a clichéd
movie sequence.

I have grown feathers
become that bird.

I am made of stars
and sky.

I am
the things I see

my humanity
a shed skin.

I am the moment
only.

I am
this becoming.

"DADDY...GONE!"

Too little to know
where father goes when he goes

out the door
his smile left hanging there

an after image
of him.

I touch the air
where he has been

wondering what's become
of him...believing

he has become the sky
the passing clouds

a bird that flies
a cat's meow.

He is now
all things

of what a world
is made.

I stare at the air
willing him to be the shape

I love him in
my big man

who scoops me up
the scratchy kisses of his chin.

He has been translated
into a language of absence

that yet
contains him

decanted from all he was
into whatever I happen to see

whatever he be
a tiny universe of dustmotes

held in a sunbeam's
hand.

And then the coming of a time
when he becomes mine

his smile that I trace
with my fingertip

this the ordinary
miracle of his love.

WHAT THE MIRROR THINKS

The mirror sees them
arguing, but:

says...nothing.

It, observes them as so
much human furniture

that, most of the time
are nowhere

to be seen.

"Here 'n' gones' " the mirror
thinks of them.

The mirror reflects
a tiny breeze

unseen in itself that
dances with the white

net curtains
stained with sunlight.

The shadows creep
into corners

waiting for
evening.

The mirror shows
an aspidistra

that always dominates
the tiny room.

it even refers to
the tattered Penguin

Orwell

fallen to the floor
still...unread.

The carpet the mirror sees
is genuine

Persian, but:
it has seen better days

faded with sunlight.

There is a small hand mirror
on an antique wash basin

that still holds
the woman's scowl

for a few moments, but:
now. . .doesn't.

Mirror looks at
mirror.

But, again:
says....nothing.

There is - nothing
: to say.

The humans have gone
taken themselves out of

the picture
so to speak.

But, their anger
still hovers in the air.

The curtains
are still

...dancing.

"Hmmmmmm..?"
thinks the mirror

"...Hmmmmmm!"

TELEGRAM

She burns
the words.

Kills them
with fire.

Death dies
in the flames.

But the words stil
stand there in the air.

Even now
in her old age.

The words
written in flames.

She misses the future
she never had with him.

She cries that he never
saw his child.

THE SECRETARY OF WAR
DESIRES ME TO

( she holds it until
it burns her fingertips )

EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT
YOUR HUSBAND  PRIVATE....

( how dare they
even say his name )

WAS KILLED IN ACTION
ON THE 15TH OF JULY

( the black smoke brings
tears to her eyes )

IN FRANCE
LETTER FOLLOWS

!LHUDE SING CUCCU!

the treetops on tiptoe
looking out for spring
birds singing in their heads

THE MOST HUMAN THING THERE IS

I watch intently
in my mind’s eye

an ancient Egyptian
scribe take his pen and write

“My heart is in balance with yours.”

And laugh.

At how not an iota
of love

has changed since that then
& this now.

Through seconds or centuries
Love flies

through hieroglyph
to cursive English script

Love
the most human thing
there is.

You run down
the stairs

quickly quickly

your floating skirt
flowing step by step

after you

as if it were
your own private river

splashing at your heels

my heart flooded
with desire.

BACH FOR CHRISTMAS! (for my pal Al)

The church orchestra
search around for an
E sharp.

The conductor blows his nose.

But as the oboe player points out:
'That's in F sharp! '

They laugh.

The singer
starts singing

words like
stepping across ice as it cracks:

'In the beginning
was the Word
and the Word was
...lilac! '

Yet more laughter.

The stained glass listens
to their musical tomfoolery

as they practice their perfection
& the rehearsals drag on.

Tonight it will be
nothing but Holy.

A pagan tree
cowers in a corner

all Christmasy.

A church hanging
proclaiming:

'Praise him
hail and lightning! '

As we two
lost souls

delight in
the music

of being
...human!

THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

( Philomena her name is)

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.

MY WAR

the bomb fell on the graveyard
the dead laughed
they were used to being dead

the moss had eaten their names
the dead could not remember
who they were

a batch of kids
clutching gas masks
afraid of the sky

blackberries and air raid sirens
his name on cardboard around his neck
they were living the war

the war
had invaded their lives
bombs had become normal

the gas mask
left out in the storm
filling up with rain

he didn't like the gas masks
they turned people
into insects

"A carrot on a stick!"
instead of an ice cream
"but then I'd never had ice cream!"

"Carrots can't
stand them to this day!"
clouds reflected in his eyes

Daddy was up in the air
fighting in the sky
I never cried when he died

he went up in the air
and stayed there
"Next door to Heaven!" Mum says

strange creatures in a field
cows I think they're called
I'm afraid they'll eat me

"WELL, WELL. . !"

Under the night's
sodium lights

I watched my shadow's
shadow

trying to keep in step
with the flesh and blood me.

I unfastened time
:- all hooks and eyes -:

laughed as unloosened
it floundered in a drain

as my mind made
its escape

( not tied to this
body or to me

free to wander
amongst the falling rain

hide in the space
between sound and sound

become one thing
- one thing only -

becoming now
- all things -

But see the rain ceases
to talk to itself

and I hooked up time
:-  moment to moment  -:

so that it resumed
doing what it ought to.

The last train of thought
had already left.

A moon lay asleep
in a tiny puddle.

I stepped over it
careful not to disturb

its slumber

a busker played
AROUND MIDNIGHT

as if we were
in a movie.



"Well, well..!
I tell myself
"Well, well!"

THAT'S...one small step. .  .

A common garden
puddle

flecked with stars
& seated at its center

a naked moon
bathing her self

caught unawares
without her clouds

a Goddess fallen
among mere mortals

but at my footfall
they all scatter to the heavens

in a splash
ripples clinging to

my right blue
suede shoe.

THE NOWHERE & EVERYWHERE OF IT ALL

Without a second glance
I step into the book.

I have Great Expectations.

Just pop in to be Pip
yet again.

I hide in the full stop
at a page's end.

Nip in between
the space between

word & word.

My mother's voice
seeks me out.

I leave just as Miss Havisham  goes
wooooosh!!!!

Or I step surreptitiously
into a Jack B. Yeats

becoming pigment
becoming paint.

Here being blue.
Now being red.

Thinking thick impasto thoughts.

Shape shifting from horse
to rider to sea.

There is nothing
I can not be.

"Dónall...Dónall...where...have you been!"

"Nowhere..!" I say

( and sotto sotto voce )

"...everywhere....everywhere..."

LOST BALLOON

crawling from the crash
I couldn't have died
if I tried

I had a son to save
laughed
spat in death's face

pulled him from the flames
I forbade him to die
he disobeyed

the car exploded
burning the edges
of the night

I survive
without him
a death in itself

my reflection
does all the talking
I just stare in the mirror

Christmas now
I feel like a lost balloon
sticking to the ceiling

TELLING THE BEES

"A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
   Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
   And the same brook sings of a year ago."

Telling The Bees - John Greenleaf Whittier

A cloud of bees
angry not to be told.

"Why the delay...
why this day!"

I tell them I could find
no words.

Could hardly tell myself
the truth of your death.

Unable to believe
or to accept.

I couldn't speak
or rhyme.

Despite the Plath
or Greenleaf Whittier.

Grief is a voice
that cannot speak.

Death tears the tongue out
then commands me to speak.

I have only
this silence.

I come before this
court of bees.

Speak only
in silences.

I stand in the form
of a crucifix.

Accept the suffering
of your fierce stings.

Atoning for
the not telling.

The bees and I
now as one.

*

The old tradition of telling the bees when someone has gone over to the other side...usually in a little rhyme....keeping them in the know so that they know what's what and who's what now that there has been this huge shift in the world with the death of someone loved. Sometimes hives were aligned to the house in acknowledgement.

ZAK'S PRAYER


Little Zak
(just a little scrap of a chap)    
with a deep Barry White voice

enquires(as he enquires
about everything) :

“Why is your hair white? ”

He listens patiently to the explanation
how after a head injury

“I went white overnight! ”

Being a good Christian child
he tells me

he will pray for me
for the “black to be back! ”

I’m very tempted
to dye it for the next day

just to prove his prayer
right.

When his fervent prayer
doesn’t turn the situation around

...he frets:

I tell him
God & me

are both happy
with it…like this.

“Really? ”
He asks.

“Really! ”
I affirm.

“Have it your own way then
but man...

It makes you look
old & grim!"

I grin
tell him that I am what I am

but that I can live with it:
"Ok..!" he sighs "...have it your own way!"

GOING BACK INTO THE LIGHT

Every year your memory
fading

'til you are nothing
more than

a figment of my imagination
than the man

you were
to me.

Photographs of you
in an old shoe box.

I can't bear to look
at them

size 9
brogues...tan...if I remember rightly

the photographs I mean
the shoes long gone

one at a seaside
sailing out to sea.

Each year I take a photo
out

( Polaroid of course
a craze of yours ).

Set it in the sun
let the summer eat into you

giving you back
to the light

that made you
when the shutter clicked.

Here you are
now

nothing but white

nothing but white.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

just as my eyes open
I catch a glimpse of the world
throwing itself together

nearly caught the world
putting itself together
bit slapdash this morning

world in a hurry
just manages to put itself together
as my eyelashes part

I stay up
to catch the world in the act
but alas sleep seduces me

I can see the world
laughing at me
"I'm too fast for you!" it smirks

finally I've found
that I am just one of the things
the world puts together

THE STONE WARM IN THE PALM

the stone skips
across an ocean
shatters an horizon

the wounded sun's disc
day bleeds
into night

now the skinny dipping
now the excited shouts
we dive into the moon

the moon'******br>broken with our quick nakedness
the sharp knife of youth

MORNING'S MINION

The kestrel
threw its shadow

on the path
that ran away from me

vanishing into the sun
before it could enter my eyes.

I saw and did not see it.

I had only ever seen it
in words

the poet's lines
hovering in my mind

until here upon my arm
in a football ground

deigning to allow us
in its presence

gazing into
and beyond

my tiny humanity.

A WONDER TOLD SHYLY
(for Res)

He cradles it
palm to palm

like a newborn.

Talks to it
tenderly

as if his self
was talking to his soul

& the squeezebox
with a little wheeze

(that's almost
human)

talks back to him
in music

(the language
of the soul)

and we
overhear

this private
conversation

&
are still

drinking deep
of its beauty


*


  A WONDER TOLD SHYLY is  about that wonderful moment in the concert when Liam Clancy slings the guitar to the side and recites Austin Clarke's THE PLANTER'S DAUGHTER and then asks the squeezebox about a plaintive Irish air.


As Clarke's poem puts it....' like a bell that is rung...like a wonder told shyly...and oh she was the Sunday in every week!'

OUTSIDE THE LINES

crayon drawn on crayon
a car crash of colour
“I’m colouring the colour! ”

colours hide in corner
rest of page a blank
“The colours are having a rest! ”

center page
an explosion of red & blue
“The colours are having a fight! ”

aBlobOfOrangeGreenHairPurpleEyes
her scrawl
“This is my bestest Dad! ”

one eye
balanced on my hair
other eye escaped from my face

Daddy
a multi-coloured
blob of slime

child drawings
on fridge door
chronicler of our lives

Mummy at least
has a figure
slim as a matchstick

MR. BLUE SKIES

He clasps her
'round her tiny waist

in a chap-ish
1940i-ish manner.

The size of his hand
almost cleaving her

into two
distinct sections

like an ant
she thinks.

She laughs
in b&w.;

A sudden gust
blows the chiffon

the blue material clinging to
her new found woman's shape

her every curve
outlined and how

so that it appears she's ****
as a Windmill girl.

"Now, now..!" she stays
his straying hand.

She calls him her
Mr. Blue Skies.

She gives a cheery wave.

"And just who are you
waving to..?"

he whispers into her
***** blonde hair.

"I'm waving to the future
me who

will be looking back
at this me now!"

"Hello me!"

"You're daft!" he laughs
tousling her curls.

He goes to fight Mr. ******
in the skies.

Never comes back.

Takes this photo
everywhere with him.

She often thinks of him
lost up there in the sky.

The photograph returned
to her.

She never had another chap.

And now only now
does her future self

wave back to
the girl in the photograph.

She strokes his face
with a fingertip.

He smiles.

A MOMENT'S REFLECTION

pen and cygnets
float upside down in
the moment's reflection

A NAME BY ANY OTHER. . .

She smiles in Russian.
"What's your name?" I ask her.
"Is Tina!" she laughs.

"Ah...Tina!"
"No not..Tina!"
"Istina!. . .it means...the Truth."

she winks
slinks as if she's
in inverted commas

her eyes the colour
of an ocean
now green now blue

hidden inside
her smile
(the kiss )

she disappears 'round the
corner leaving in the air
a perfect perfume replica of her

the grand piano
sits in its silence
dreaming of music

AH TRUTH...THAT LIAR!

"Ah Truth...
...that liar!'

He felt released
from time

as if he had escaped
the moment he

had found finally
him self.

the heart attack
held the door open

politley ( so it seemed )
for him

& Death
slammed it shut.

"I am busy dying..."
he thought nonchalantly.

"Time was away &
somewhere else. . ."

as Louis had somewhere said
in his long ago childhood.

His face now
whiter than the page

his lips a purple
that frightened.

Lady Death's kiss
an exquisite bliss.

"No...not yet...not yet!"
she whispered in his ear

returning him
to himself.

This now
the grand pain.

Who was it
who said?

"I am...myself still
though the world were

turned the wrong
side out."

as if soliloquising
upon a stage

trapped in a cone
of light

out of which he
can not break out.

"Ah, Truth...
. . .that liar!"

*******

My career as
a human being

had begun.

It was I
who had been chosen.

I would not have  chosen
it for myself.

There is so much to learn.
And so little time.

I found I had to
downscale my mind.

The loss of such
so much knowledge

was hard to bear
and this thing

called breathing
was so annoying.

Just being an organic
system was an ordeal.

But it was necessary
to understand humans

from within
to know them.

The use of speech
in place of our telepathy

was so terribly
off putting.

"It is for the good
of the cause!"

I repeated our Leader's
motto like a mantra.

I had inhabited
my host for no more

than four hours
becoming him entirely.

Such is my torture.

"Just do what the human
was doing

before you
entered him.

But this endless day time
TV is killing me.

As is
his constant twittering.

I find his system is
taking over mine.

I have lost me.
Am become him.

No longer OF-FRON 777
but a creature called Trump.

I...he
reached for that button.

The mothership
deserts me.