Champagne corks pop
a cow parsley flourish
on your life’s roadside
after driving alone a while
someone to fiddle with the A/C
and monopolise the aux
with unrepentant cheese
is a welcome change
as the prevailing breeze
shifts

Shush brain,
let the regular, looped refrains drop,
seek a safe, blank space,
a place for quietude
and maize based snacks:
for the love of Pete
relax

A bold density of memory anchors,
scattered across a past
where colour saturates
like someone sat on the remote control,
holy hand grenades on loose afternoons
with the slap and bicker of passing the joypad
in blithe ignorance of washing piles
deadlines and empty pockets

Drifting in the now, helium light,
well-heeled but drab,
absent fingers trace the slight links
on the line around arthritic ankles
as they gently, surely give

On the whole kindness equals weakness thing,
I question any ****-nettle licking bulldog
who with merry abandon will slobber, chase and
bark bark bark at tired rabbits
to hide the bare patch where real ***** should be

Glorious, true strength comes from settling into
another’s shoes and sadness
and making both a little lighter
while still achieving arbitrary, stunted targets
set by dim witted stumps getting paid way too much

Hawthorn breaks a smile in the hedgerow,
whispers a truth
that, easily forgotten, delights again
and the indoor pain is lifted a little

The green is almost angry
demanding attention like a fat toddler
or peacocking buffoon
that somehow still wins hearts

I cried yesterday
despite spring’s giving relief as backdrop
anticipating a warmth
that still evades my fingertips

Friday night fleeing from the scrum
like the last thing on our minds
are other people’s kids:
the outrageous, hysterical bashing we take
hour by hour as
we
just
try
while each successive boss quickly forgets front lines
and asks for ‘evidence’
of piling into the meat grinder

Then something tiny reminds
why we’re even here:
a flood of tears perhaps as dogs have died
or that kid who says “I’m a microwave
bzzzzzzzzz”
and despite our glowering frowns
we smile so hard we cry

I forget myself sometimes
in nettles and dead wood
as feet step on, envious of small things
that skip through barbed brambles
like ladder rungs to new space

I’ll content myself with lungs of open air
and try to care less about slings and arrows
and my Brobdingnagian clump

to be allowed here is enough