Today I thought “*******.”
You’re rude to those I love
through ignorance,
yours of course, as mine is finer tuned
though I abhor you
for your corporate judgment
in kind I’m classifying you
to post in **** encrusted pigeonholes
so future proles
will know to write you off
and your specious waffle
will forever be followed
by polite cough,
Yours Faithfully

The garden cats aren’t mine
with my pss-pss-pss
and shuffle finger
I try to entice them
but mainly, warily
they ignore in the truest
feline tradition
to leave me and my allergies
wishing

The brief needle in my arm
and onwards
the dog with the slobbered tennis ball
the boys braving bare feet in the stream
and onwards
soft wind still with a sharp edge
the brief needle in my arm
the tumble song of the ice cream van
and onwards

Skimming and scanning
the grammar of the riverbank’s
brown leaf, new shoot syntax
a bold type wren,
like the old bouncing ball of singalongs,
led my eye to read the waterline
and yet I still couldn’t discern
if smiles or tears were written
while the branch tips still scribed

Look at us perched again,
anxious dreams set in long gone buildings
where the kids won’t do a thing we ask
and for some reason we’re naked
(except for a mask)

And as my old man says,
the conveyor belt hasn’t so much as slowed
so our wish for a cautious toe to get set
will be whipped from starter to panicked plenary
before we hear the gun crack

Know this, comrades:
the holes in our practice we think show clear
are lost to the fizz and bubble of our charges.
When Monday comes they’ll listen (mostly)
as we carry on regardless.

When the tiredness came
sad eyes regarded it as nothing new
in hindsight she’d always made space for it,
an unconscious pet bed

the lack of shock
as it crept to her was almost nice
fingers on imagined fur
she felt her edges numb
retract from the screech of daily headlines
and dumb fingered scrolling
that sparked electrocutions

pacing in slow circles
around the blue pulse of her core
it settled unrequested
and pretended a defence
while forever she reached for rest

On the news
the language on the vehicles changed
from the ignored alphabets
to those we sort of got:
to ambulanza
then l’ambulance
to ambulance
to ambiwlans
to carbad-eiridinn
to otharcharr
to ours