Breathing cold vibrancy,
the earth and sun remind us
that whatever prattles on the surface
will be layered over,
fossilised,
and judged as advances
or fat, white dead ends
by the clever folk ahead

I’ll tread this crystal mud,
set a while to peer through veils
to make poor assumptions of what’s to come

As augury I’ve asked the birds
but shy of the same woodpecking rattle,
they stay schtum

I’ll indulge in haruspicy
in making dinner, sure
that no steak and kidney mouthful tells

Glass in hand, hepatoscopy
defines the coming year
where new is frozen

First footing towards
what could be bridge or precipice,
hard to tell in the usual mists
of another spin round the sun

The groundhog sting
has left us wary of what’s to come:
with an alphabet begun
how many masks need to be worn
before omega calls?

But the sun is shining
and it’s abnormally warm,
so that’s good,
isn’t it?

Mushroom promises swell into existence,
flim-flam miracles,
pristine plump “truths”
when uttered, swelling proud
alongside peach-keen
endorsing smiles

But the treacle of decay acts quickly
so even the casual observer
sees the rot before the ink dries,
smells rank mould,
and we decry ad infinitum

A broken clarity
scored by fat pigeon coos
and the gangster chatter of crows

A winged court is in session and
they are not finding in our favour

Their behaviour’s changed
so even the ranks
of hedge birds are emboldened
to thumb their beaks
and sing clear in number
and the woodpecker’s gavel falls

When our industry prevails
will we seek vengeance,
or preserve this
hallowed cacophony?

Stop dropping off fledglings
like I can just ignore
something that is not yet grown
and expected to start functioning
alone!

Last year,
you cocky redbreasts thought
that three could bob happily
in the construction site
and thankfully I found no bodies
or feather puffs

This year,
that cheeky blackbird
who happily stalks the lawn
(though moss pile is more accurate)
has dropped bright and happy chicks
in the pell-mell mix of my
****** horticulture

And don’t get me started on the pigeons!

The cats round here,
like everywhere
are at best loveable rogues
with claws on fingers
and toes that like to ****
for spits and giggles

In these times
I turn to nature to save me
but you crank my anxiety
like the ***** grinder’s
forbidden monkey

Gimme a break, please?

Most of us wrestle our ball of twine:
the more we struggle to catch an end and untangle,
the deeper our fumbling takes us

for some the fight twists dark,
the yarn becomes barbed wire
and they bleed loose in many small ways

for others the yarn dwindles
microfilament caught
eternally wriggling on the end hook

I call to you now and give quicksand advice:
stop still and calm and rest,
look about you and a hand will come

Breathe:
another week
has passed without
disaster catching
you

Funny
how that
seems to be
the common
pattern

As teachers,
(and I know some are back already, sorry)
we are doing the equivalent
of sportsfolk psyching up

Our judo coach is shaking and slapping
while we, in denial, are still mowing lawns
and planning actual meals from recipes

In our dreams, the Bueller…?
Bueller…? Bueller…?
reels are already playing
with our classes disobeying to our faces

So for everyone’s sake
ease us in please
keep us keen and we’ll deal with your progeny
‘til Halloween

I would scorch the end of the cork
and score bags under my eyes
if the black of my tired spleen
was not already weighing

Like the luggage of the ******
packed in haste, always in haste
so that essentials are oft forgot
like health, or peace, or dignity

As it is, the cork stays unburnt,
but out of the bottle
as a gentle “**** the lot of you.”

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

Saturday afternoon with borrowed sun
that we’ll miss another day

I commit to develop my cooking
by using stock
which seems to be the unspoken gap
between stuff that tastes OK
and stuff that tastes ace

they should really tell us that

I forget the interstitial blips,
boiled egg dinners,
weak cups of tea,
the tight cost-benefit chats
where eyes don’t meet

I remember certain things,
not necessarily in the order they came
but in vermillion shocks
and ****** afterglows
as heartbeats slowed back down

It costs to live
we know this
but the currency is ours to spend

We should be livid at those
who pretend to care
espouse our best interests
but then push us
to be batteries for a
busted machine

Remember their fat faces
when we’re clear
their arch indifference
and disdain, for once,
for our fear

When they return again
to using our dreads
against us

remember

The loud yawn of time
when you are held tight
is petrifying

An indifference to your captivity
as nature sees to normalcy
reveals our fleshy entropy
as nothing more than energy
to wax and wane

Beached pebbles
on an infinite shore
to pretend more is orange ignorance

There is solace, I guess
in acceptance,
but our primal, primate arrogance
prevents much

I grew on after she was gone
unaware that routines of love
high days and Sundays
had woven spells

Bay leaf smell
kindnaps back
to a kitchen where windows,
steamed with riches baked and boiled,
wombed us from the outside world

Born to patience and a place at the table
each chair full, with more squeezed if needed
while more than food sustained us

Quit your childish, mouth breathing,
shirt buttoned up wrong nonsense
and as a grown human
witness the others around you

Sometimes they cook and talk different,
sometimes look and worry too,
but as has been said for centuries
blood is always red
and there are way too many ******

The ones truly coming to take your lives,
your jobs, your holidays,
your houses, cars and sweethearts
speak on TV, Facebook, Twitter and the rags,
demanding you fear the folk
whose hearts and hands are desperate
to protect their kin, like you

In their money nests
the few snooze and giggle at your
wasted weight and misdirected roar

Bring it to bear

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

Iscariot behaviours mean
this never temple body
sometimes struggles to hide
the weather roll
that the eager might hail
pathetic fallacy
with smug misrecognition

Listen to the twitch and thud
as you get older, sure,
but hold off on fearing the worst

The hearse always takes a while
for those who hear its stately glide
daily

#age #health #anxiety #peace #steady

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

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

Earlier in the morning
I’d read the movements of a stalwart blackbird
flicking dead leaves on my concrete driveway,
gleaning for grubs

Later, as I unloaded the weekly food shop,
substitute, as it was, for fun,
I heard an imperious cry,

scrolling up, the fork-tailed red kites circled
in a sunshine that denied pathetic fallacy

and the screech they made meant nothing

My dog-soul forgets to feed
and starves black,
paces circles for a bed
and with dead weight,
settles

thought and action,
usually smitten with intricacies,
are quietly smothered to nothing

a flat purgatory
scored with white noise, overcast
rendered in a pauper’s palette
on a canvas with no edge

ticks remain untocked
until at some distance
a mechanism is rewound
and a leash jangled
for an ear to lazily lift again

Having faith in the change
the wind might bring
is a thing
y’know?
a challenge
testing bitter thoughts
and locked up hearts
too long apart

But it will blow
y’know?
this wind we wait for
bringing other thoughts
to sit inside
and while away togetherness

I watch the forecasts
come and go
y’know?
and pretend that there’s a pattern

This mapped isle
has never been one
for clement weather
but I’ll pretend to know

GCTA shouldn’t spell your name
but I’m pretty sure you’ve hacked my DNA
so that a well-meaning scientist
seeking to cure my horrendous malady
with cutting edge gene therapy
would scratch their head
in finding your name writ so deep

There’s a jazz Christmas in my mind

that other, impossibly cool cats
seem to have,

but I have never found

This pareidolia grips me
with fingers made of nothing

Clouds can’t lie, just are
and what I choose to see is mine

Whether this weather flatters or chides
is all inside, inside

A squall passed by
like a rough emotion,
forgotten in seconds
as a swathe of blue sky
assuages

An explosion,
pulse quickened,
the adrenaline itch
threatened to stifle me

throat constricted,
mouth cotton dried
as I eyed the few I could see
in the front row

then the music
as familiar as my pillow
gave a beat and suggested melody
and as I sang I rose

Walking with the sun behind
eyes fixed on my worn boots
as they try to find the old stride
each time they lift, this still winter light
flicks ahead under them, easy as,
like nothing’s changed
but when they fall, this light cuts,
mud grips and boots go blind

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

Hey guys!
Remember not to **** or **** anyone.
I know modern life is hard
with, like, credit cards and stuff
but just because you can do
something unutterably terrible
doesn’t mean you should
Ok?

And yeah, we don’t have a monopoly
on being shitbergs
In the general pissy sea of life
but statistically, with numbers and stuff,
we ****

So, y’know, try not to.
See how that feels.

Listless
but not lacking lists
we drift from start of task to task
half a heart engaged
half a mind to dash
make a break for clean air
and there’s the rub

our chimp brains love
and chimp arms seek hugs
but they must stay empty
at least
until the dust settles

Six assorted buzzards and kites
claimed this sky today,
their joyed metallic calls proclaimed above me
while I pottered slightly mournfully below
in a fecund but disappointing garden

From their strident majesty
I should take inspiration
and bend the land to match their empire

I got as far as picking some crisp packets
out of a hedge

Green cathedral bells
are felt more than heard
though some tolls chime audible
to stomach depths
heart breadths
last breaths

A pin
asking just enough of the taught surface
to make it give

bang-burst a gust
of shameful, baleful disappointment
snuffing embarrassed cake candles

or gush a splat of misery
to spatter snot and tears
halting high squeals on a summer lawn
as eyes look for answers

Here is a carrot
we made it from sticks

eat it

eat the stick carrot
or by gosh
we’ll hit you with
this stick

which is not made of carrots

now
here’s a survey about how you feel
which we also made from sticks
although
it doesn’t matter if it’s glass or gold
we won’t look at it anyway

so
eat the stick carrot
and try not to look over there
where they’ll give you actual carrots
and sticks are frowned upon

oh
you’ve gone

Caterpillar
Windowsiller
Crawl across
Do what you willer
Caterpillar
Stomach filler
My dad calls you
Cabbage killer

You’ve recalled what it’s like to be cold
in this blustered autumn wind
your fingers may be privileged
to flick a switch on central heating
and ignore the insistent, shivering world
while it continues to divide and burn

Sing me a song of now
to hear what it sounds like

Broken rhythms and discords
or a bitter battled harmony?

I have my feet to stomp
and will whistle and holler free

To reach ears, hidden and open
all shaped the same

Having dispatched the sound rabble
with mostly love,
our already flaccid balloon
deflates with a final raspberry

a fitting fanfare to a term
that left its markers marked,

the shared mirth,
across eyes and hearts,
at a **** noise
proving once again:
we are why we’re here

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

Time ticks down as we gouge,
burn, eat and smear this planet,
all the while avoiding eye-contact
as we line our graves with cash
for a soft and pointless landing

Standing knee-deep already
on a rented doorstep
the next in line rightfully curse us
as the fat get fatter, fit to burst,
but never fit for purpose

A brilliant cold
pinching cheeks
like zealous relatives.

As long as you have warmth
to return to
it delivers similar bliss.

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

The clarity of that light
apologises for the fact the cold
will still shrivel your extremities

Once again
we sit in wait of the first hot pulse
to wake our state

They say it’s coming
but we’ve been (not) burned before
so cautious underwear is worn

But be sure
that ****** foil barbecues will sell
in panicked droves come Monday

Remember the roast potato days,
try to feel them when they arrive
in a kind of “What is this life…” way

The days when a surfeit of crisp-crunch
surrounds a fluffy middle, robed in a gravy of any persuasion
placating even the glummest sentiments

When rains are driven off
by silken rice pudding
spiked with a sweet acid dollop of jam of any fruit

Recall the carbohydrate wealth
when the poor days come
and your heart-stomach rumbles

Butter fat richness will return
and learning to trust this
is an adult meal indeed

Person Man Woman Camera TV

As much a testament
to current reality
as any babbled, 24 hour, rolling drivel
from partisan spokesfolk
who affix the yoke of profit
by making and driving the wedge

In the wide awake courtroom,
alone, maybe 3 A.M.
you can hear the truth,
have the human faculties,
can see the evidence,
even if the verdict hurts

It’s less painful than making eye contact
with a mirror image who allows
the lies
the loss
the inhumanity
just to heal a bruised ego
and still not sleep easy