Can you fault us for thinking
this blue above is vaulted,
strung in bolts, in reams
of ichor,
of material suggested and believed
instead of stubborn physics?

Stereoscopic vision is great
for seeing the ants walk close
and the rehabilitated bees
on local blooms

It can’t see, properly,
that the azure ceiling is a lie
of just refraction,
that’s always there
as long as our clouds allow

loose moral blossom
flaunting for all comers
throbbingly defying
pigeon-holes
to let life thrum

word worrier
word wanderer
caught impossible
thought entirely
lexicographer extraordinaire
except for those I’m dumb on
like Floccinaucinihilipilification
which could mean
anythang x

The old deceptive sky trick
looks warm to the eye trick
warm under glass
while my well shaded *** shivers

deliver the goods, spring

so yeah, them birds are singing
and blooms conspire too
making you think you’re good and clear
and it’s time for shirt sleeves

but these goosepimples beg to differ

Gies a wee sookie
a wee swatch an aw

member a was braw,
pure braw

an a luv ye an aw

Azure, it tried to be,
a pure blue, more than *****,
more than daily truths

Like a sky undecided
as if it was supposed to be vaulting
but its hem got caught

And the stumble was the same as always,
teeth clenched really tight
til the dark goes

It’s true that sometime
bare limb and sprig can be beautiful,
that dun lands can show stark heart,
but for this diurnal chimp
the cough of leaves remembered,
a view engorged,
is deeply needed

I saw my knuckles in sunlight.

Seems I’m doing alright,
in that their crocodilian terrain
showed survival

I recall a science class
where they asked us to pinch skin
on the back of our hand
to see how quickly it returned

now, it appears
I’m learned

#age #skin #morphology #longevity #content #knuckles

Catch it if you can
this ticking of seconds borrowed
from another belonging

They are slighter than most,
slipping through fingers
like pinched grape pips

But the rushed pulp
should someday make
good wine

Have a care,
they said
if the wind changes you’ll stay like that

and I think I missed the breeze
that fixed me in place
in among the hurricane days,

but the aches and pains
don’t shift no more,
just there
to be muted
by whatever suits
and ties

Intent on the final bell ring
declaring spring for reals
as we feel every inch
a bag of hammered turds

You will have heard the crack
in every colleague’s voice this term,
felt the glut of panics
that the journey home may be in a hearse

Still, it could be worse,
and when the rear view
shows a dwindling, darkening school,
we’ll spend two weeks pondering how,
exactly

Not lost as much as misplaced,
gone from where you should be
in bosoms of families
and conspiracies of friends
still adding your narrative arc,
your author’s hand

It is for us to ape your style,
continue your quirks and syntax
so the story, like these spring bouquets
will bloom well

Bookends with fatty livers and bad backs
squinting at instructions
for another **** fool distraction
and the laughing, thankfully

On the walk, bees, butterflies,
catkin reminders of time and loops
and irregular pooping
as constants

Thankfully, laughing
requires just enough muscles
from those that still work,
but I’ll feel it tomorrow

The absolute ******* grind of it,
each inch upholstered rough,
sandpaper cushions and *******,
this is school my loves:
best days of your life,
except the frequent crying
and wishing for an end,

but then
the dazzle blather
of someone excited by your subject,
your patient, pent up words
heard
and your bitten cynicism scuffs enough
to see your old electric truths beneath

Into the long grass,
the long, long ponder
lost to breath and tears
lost to wonder
lost to the clear and present
or the hereafter
but there in the past
a cancer tumour twisted
all the slow growth
til the now,
this rotten gutted now

In this view, I know the name
of that village on the hill
but I forget the next and the next

Most of these birds, this song,
were here before
but the heft and pin-black eye
of the red kite are new,
not known

And though the sharp-scrape panic
as the pheasant protests
has sounded a thousand times past,
these days it’s heard different

Sometimes, tides behind teeth get stuck
as if the moon, distracted,
looses its inexorable pull

then all the weight of water
sits stagnant
while each pescatarian thought
from the zipping, inconsequential minnow
to the ponderous whale bulk
sulks, sick and stuck

If you see these green gills,
or the overspill in the eyes of those
you know
maybe sit awhile, harbour side
and cast a line or two

Two paracetamol
washed down with Gaviscon
from the car stash, 7:57

Later, at break,
if I’m feeling cheeky
I’ll pop a couple of Nurofen
from the desk drawer
and ride that mild alleviation

At lunch, if the planets align
and I reach the toilet,
in the muffled cubicle
my eyelids will flutter
as I stretch and let the Anadin Plus
do its thing

Medicate to educate

Out on the ice as the season turns
the lake groans in leviathan language
and I understand, I do

But routine decides the route, not me,
and this floor might spiral fracture
as a passing thought
to those dark waters

The hedgerow pulse
seems quickened as the dipped flit
of three blue **** from here to there
declares that something is coming

Maybe too early to call spring,
the jackdaw on a slack wire
is still willing to give energy to balance,
as his eye sees good things

And the fettered earth begins to flex
as something elliptical
solar
inherent
returns to tickle us

As nightly, screens scream,
buckle, near break
with images of blistered humanity
abroad
with normal folk caught
in quick-quick-slow anxiety,
at home
a fat clown
knights a *****

Impossibly,
pigeons sparked against a cerulean sky
spinning like a tossed hand of loose change
in appreciation of the day’s artistry

On the bed’s edge,
trying to align and affix,
gingerly stretching muscles that used to behave,
their co-ordinated flight cast me
momentarily saddened
as each sock and trouser leg moaned on

Still,
the sun kissed us all, anyway

I seem to be a man,
it comes with ups and downs
and sometimes I don’t get my way,

but like an adult,
and broken-heartedly, a woman,
I’ll try to be OK

Aaaaah!
Understand that every thought you had
about adults knowing what they’re doing
rapidly disappears when you become one

So even the plush ******
sat at the Romanesque desk
preaching complex reasons and threats
…because?
is hideously full of ****

When the best toy is being threatened
in kindergarten, the fattest egos flex
and either with aggression
or diseased crocodile tears
will appeal or impel.

Well. Here we are.
Men get old, even me.
But unlike cheese or wine,
it is not fine, virile,
or true.

We were woollen
as the coach pulled up
alongside the C of E school

our swimming provided free
and municipal
so the stung eyes and barked, sodden ideas
were mitigated

at least if we fell
into the rank brown swells nearby
our inevitable drowning
could be offset:

the boy could swim
and was a king at buying the 5p
Highland Toffee from the machine

What does Eunice bring
on these blustered, raging winds?

Busted fences put up in haste,
a forlorn balloon cut loose,
with a smiley face harking back to those
asymmetric aceeeed days
when polarity was frowned upon:
what’s your name where you from what you done?

A man cut from rich serge
can be employed to gaslight
blackened eyes to white,
but the **** in Kent’s hedges
don’t lie

Thrilled, wrapt, beguiled,
bruised, broken, lost,
tempest toss’d
or star-sky smitten,
it’s your heart we love alone

even if it feels so,
you never are x

What a piece of work is man,
all of our wet viscera
interconnected
like, even spleen and cheek

No more is this clear
than when your kidneys get sick
and send phantasmagoria
to your tired brain bits

All hail antibiotics

The weight of the world
as it waits for the red, red earth to move
a collective breath held
as a personal fear is shared

For a news cycle, we care
and choke a little at the tiny coffin
before clowns and sabre-rattlers
blind us from the graves behind

The sounds of your voices
work with me,
the resonance of your mirth,
your anger, your vexation,
your empathy, your soul,
is orchestral in our everyday scrum
to keep me humming along

I seem to have missed the lesson,
or maybe it was a paid seminar,
where being a ******* to folk not like you
is seen as cool

A staggering self-belief, or indoctrination
into a way of thinking that excludes
the workers, powerhouses, batteries,
seems insane in a way
that only limited lineages
seem genetically capable of

But now I’m stooping, so I’ll stop

Let’s all stop
being in thrall to noisy *******,
rugger-buggers who had charmed and broken youths,
who knew no hunger except in minds
and no kindness except paid for

I would feel pity, but these bred monsters
are parasitic,
so to let them survive,
******* and spouting lies,
kills us all in the end.

Britannia rules these waves

Get the angle right,
and the light from a wan blue sky
reflects on the sodden ground
like a disco dancefloor,
pathfinding to somewhere
with umbrellas in glasses,
sand between toes
and baked skin

That it is February
in this upper latitude
can do one for a minute,
let us lounge, sweat loose
and remember our grins

The bitterness of five
square spaced letters
gladiatorial, etymological,
born of thought,
a daily word hurdle
just to **** with friends

This knee used to be fine,
no grinding feelings or immobility,
I crouched like a god

I also had back muscles
that laughed off twisting,
I wiped my *** with gay abandon

My eyes focused when I woke
and any blurriness was a sign
of rock ‘n’ roll

Now, as my supposed wisdom grows,
this flabby mechanism
seems want to say no

Hear those Friday beats drop
from hard to soft
as seconds elongate,
minim rests to pause
until all too belatedly
you are freed to remember

To heat or to eat
that will be the question
whether to shiver with a gut full
of cold, cheap beans
or to yank the belt tight against the pangs
but at least feel your fingertips,
some will die, many not sleep
apart from those happy,
******* few

Mary Beard’s on TV
discussing which art
could be suppressed,
never seen and placed
in secretum

The brash *******,
raw ****** ******,
Roman Charity
and priapic rampancy
does, I suppose, provoke thought.

My submission:
anything etched
by class 9Y,  Period 5 on a Friday

We trusted you with what we love
and you broke it

jammed a fat stick in its spokes,
overwound the mechanism,
twisted the arm at a funny angle
til it snapped

haphazardly snatched at the parts
applied inappropriate glue,
pointed to one or two others, then skulked away
pretending to have never touched it,
or even been there that day

even broken its worth can still be seen
with eyes that choose to,
heard with ears not deaf from
formless brays of sycophants
who may or may not be in the mirror

we will stickle it
every little bit of it
we will fix it like new new new

Counterpoint:
I love you lot.

You colleagues and loves who despise this
alongside me
so when my foot slips or knee gives
you are at my shoulder, my elbow

with a Kit-Kat or quick jab
about being old and ****
so giggles lift the misery
of ignorant, blind and fruitless bosses

while our loss seems their gain for now
I am bound to remember this refrain:
We’re not gonna take it

So, my brothers and twisted sisters
get those pitchforks ready,
sharpen in the dark,
keep being artisans

for when the time comes,
the spreadsheets won’t even be worth
the cold nothing they’re typed on
but your healing hands will

You’ll look close for all its feints,
its lies of needing you
being lost without
while the fingers on your windpipe tighten
and those tears come in place of shouting

loud, steady, drip-drip mention
of blissed futures,
dispatched, ***** pasts,
the present full
of passive aggression
where passivity is too nuanced

you’ll still be there with open arms
and a heart dark with hope,
but that tickle-whisper in your skull
is not just the concussion
not just

I breathed deep
as my fingers curled on the wheel
and gripped leather,

my memory clutched at vinyl

the engine was running,
number plates grinning yellow
as the utter ******* torrent of thoughts
ignored the exhaust

the exhausting

I could drive out forward or reverse
well rehearsed either way

these wheels just don’t know

If you had diarrhoea
got caught short, took a ****
in that drawer where you keep all your cables
and bits tangled vociferously
then later discovered you needed
a spare micro usb,
so you had no choice
but to roll up your sleeves,
that would be this Monday

Cook for me,
put things in the ***
that make my tongue go
Hello Dolly!

Rock ‘n’ roll flavours
savoury sweet and acid hot
so lips smack and I get lost

It’s not the quantity that counts
just the beguiling intensity
of spice blends, herbs
and the nerve to let the metal smoke

Well, ol’ boy
stood in the vista, a little lost
but feet finding the pub
nonetheless

that sun tried to make its point
which, though we acknowledged,
we tried to sidestep

clag mud added heavy boots
while loose, happy chat sat
in apotheosis

til a moussaka
and a couple of sublime fish dishes
let us sit down and rest

after miles
these muscles pretend to ache

Helmed by pilots
who maybe read the manual,
definitely loved the way
the hat looked in the mirror

nearer and nearer the nuclear button we inch
cheeks pinched in at random stupidity
with no desire to suspend our own flesh
over that particular fire

Is this sick feeling jealousy?

Watching those who clearly know no better
pretend otherwise and still succeed?
When they channel the brass
of someone smarter,
harder, sharper, more charming?

What do we do
with alarms that keep ringing these days,
but hit snooze?

I had a full head of hair and you.

When I woke I had neither,
as the grey frost light
scoured my eyes true awake
I found other lies of the subconscious
hadn’t taken as hard
as your pretend shape

no real surprise, I guess,
but that doesn’t make me hate it less

Stick to the tides,
know the ruses, the rise
and fall of lunar pulls and gravity

so when you sail
your keel will only graze
what rocks beneath

for if those barnacle-stain
kelp-slapped teeth bite,
no panicked oar stroke
will hide that crimson bloom

they smell blood from a quarter mile

Some days I don’t want to leave the cinema
I sit dead centre,
hope the screen will fill my field of vision,
each speaker will cover my ears
in numbing sound
allowing thrills and broken hearts
of others’ made up tales
to supplant my own for two hours
and change

The dark holds me anonymous,
lets me depart and drift,
try on the moods in lost safety
so when credits roll
choked tears and shiny blisses
are returned, rewound, reset
for what comes next

January will not be missed
but stubbornly,
mist it is

As a kid, I know I saw air shows
although none specific stand out,
I know there were skies that
buzzed and thundered
the sound of determined direction

at each one I know there would be pilots
who threw small planes in tight loops

everyday, pulling back on the stick,
taunting gravity to notice and push,
barrelling to a zenith
of impossible weightlessness, momentary,
before the nauseous crush returned,
over and over in front of an audience

and I know I watched and thought
“That’ll be me one day.”