Christmas
as usual, buttered
with senescent conversations
this year fizzed with a citrus dialogue
of scrunched ears, hot water bottle hugs
and altogether too much hair
on the smallest head

Oh, my tired sisters and brothers
I know.
Each and every step and gesture
has hidden lead weights attached
and everything lifted now hurts

You are allowed the involuntary grunt
or voluntary tear as you stand,
all eyes and ears are itchy with
tired

There is still a smile allowed
as long as we keep an end in sight

A green myth
to explain away why things
just aren’t quite right
and the briar patch of ages
twists in verdant sinister ways

The familiar snag and scratch
bleeds differently
and won’t be soothed the same
so welts scar visible
and tell tales

New normals are bandied about
with as much thought
as the path that led here
and the beatification of old normal
is sealed

Let me sell you a fraction of truth
slanted to fit the froth-rage box
you live in

I’ll dress it in grave tones,
even implicate a scapegoat
so your priapic blast
has a focus

I’ll use fonts from Comic Sans
to Times New Roman
to ensure you bite the hook

When you look in our mirror
the hate will be palatable,
tasty,
wholesome

and as we gorge we’ll starve

Eyes snap like Polaroid:
that memory is captured
flat
so superficially it holds truths

but look more carefully at those colours
and the tunes they sing,
they make you think
something

something close to fingertips
on glossed pages
where other people's lives live
and mean little

but this is yours, ours,
and I’m holding the hours
holding on and shaking

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

Have you considered the owl?
Excluded from days
like a diabetic warned off fudge

Is the carob of night enough?
Sure, it’s dark, possibly smooth
and those tasty rodents move there

But look at the day
with a head that can turn right round
you’d see every rotten thing

Every bad stroke and selfishness,
every creaky knee and thumb
in clarity, loud

Oh to be the owl

I sat with another clip board, another list
welcoming those whose once small faces,
mad dashes, hot tears
and cold contempts
rattled these walls for five years

Some had beards, some hips, brio,
some adult eyes
that took two or three glances to recognise
the child still in

Almost all had smiles

Behind them, trooping colour to the tennis courts,
their summer school scions
began their own gangly rise
ad infinitum

A sideline:
Nomark stands on a horizon
governed by others
and has no fingers of his own to point

Every misbegotten instinct
tells him to run
from these verbose prigs,
but instincts are felt
not read or heard

Nomark squints as there is sun rising,
in colours that chafe
like eighties underwear
that didn’t breathe

He tries breathing
on his own awhile

The traditional pattern
of a set to for Nomark is this:
against the backdrop of the giant grift
perpetrated by the grand smug *****
he firmly grasps the wrong end of the stick
which, to be fair, is waved at him enough

A poster child for impotent rage
he’ll berate the checkout staff
about a voucher that’s either expired
or, mired in labyrinthine small print,
doesn’t amount to a free diddly squat

Without the words, the means,
the agency to upbraid the bosses
he huffs home on an overcrowded bus
where not a single other ****** wears a mask

Sometimes you just have to rattle
outside
like an over excited child
or pup with energy to spare

You’ll feel the breeze there
and smell leaf and soil
all seasons

Though the language changes
with the days
the message is consistent:
stay

I think
I think in buds
that root
and sometimes
blossom with you

but don’t get cute about it

To be kind is not losing,
though bitter sadness
and lonely hours
can make it hard to see,
putting others’ shoes on
simply shows you’re not alone
and though you may not be a hero
widely worshipped, here’s the thing:
you’ll bring a mote of light
to the sometimes dark nights
in peoples’ souls,
which will shine a little back
and if we all fan these coals
with easy acts of decency,
none get lost in black,
none get left behind:
be kind

Winter nights, long
like the light is lost in thought
I sometimes think of you
and the equation of our loss/gains

even though I’m **** at maths
and numbers are for squares
the outcome on the page
is positive

You know that noise
they like to use in the movies
right now?
The one that sounds like
discordant foghorns falling
bwaaaarmmm
as the big bad arrives?
That’s 2022 that is,
bring the popcorn and watch

The bittersweet blast
of ending another
another one.

Weird, unnatural, irrational.

Mixing maudlin with
the electric buzz of new beginnings,
we will drink and sleep,
cheap grins on our faces
‘til we’re adrift in three week’s time.

These days and friends are mine.

The balm of sun and charcoal smoke
instantly evoke lost togetherness
from the very first time in the eighties
when beguiled by a well fired banger
and Russ Abbot opined a party

Hold fast to the Proustian rush
as soon enough the dim seasons will return
and the muted, sterile days withhold
all but a sense of cold and pause,
so revel in the glut and sing

A spell of bone cold
to remind us that a magic
rules all
our knotted muscles contract
as the frigid air kisses
with wool and other matters
we try to defend

Just resting my eyes
as the lights in the tree dance
and some well trodden narrative
of Christmas redemption plays
in gloss on TV

the grey pull of January
is at bay for now
held off by cellophane wrappers
and the smells of a decadent kitchen

though not a Christian
I’ll be thankful anyway,
aware of the drop either side

I’ll let my usual pissy niggles rest
til next year

I’m invincible, unstoppable

until I stub my toe
and come a cropper
and the earth below me shifts
and sits on my chest with a manic grin

The gasp for breath
like a feeble request for one more chance,
******* properly in a bunch
as all avenues close

These are the swings and roundabouts,
the reciprocal motions
that see rise and fall as one

decades in you’d think it’d all make sense
but this viscous, thick emotion
is as sticky as always

If you did, then you would
but you don’t, so you won’t,

to pretend otherwise
makes an *** out of you
and a corpse out of me

Last dew glimmers on grass
and gives in, winking off til tomorrow:
there’s no shame yielding to this sun

Rugged boots on
hiding flesh and bone that still shakes
a little
I step forth onto schizophrenic paths
that for now are solid

Today, the verge incense sways and envelops,
intoxicating, masking the usual decay
and loss
enabling a contemplation
that holds til yappy pups cut it,
angry that no one made them bigger

We stay in the meat grinder
as kids are mostly good

we give our time to causes
that no other buggers would

we shoulder the weight
as our colleagues keep us up

we try to raise a thousand toasts
with nothing in our cup

we don’t do it for league tables
or targets plucked to reach

or for managers who do their jobs
as they do not/cannot teach

we do it as it’s in us
it is simply who we are

and we’ll do it til indifference
goes just one
                      step
                             too
                                  far

To clap, or not to clap, that is the question
Whether it’s nobler in the mind to give
Undying love to those who save us
Or by opposing, expose those
Who have systematically underfunded
A public fed service with malice
It dies, we die, there’s the rub
Chatter and cheer will rightly raise from
Many whose hearts are true and proud
Whose hearts must be hardened
Next at the ballot box to lift us:
There is no country without unity
No unity without truth, no economy
Without each and every soul, always

Ach, my amygdala
agglomerates ridiculousness,
a ****** laden froth
of other possibilities and lives
and loves, loves
and mitigated losses
to address the hurt

bracken memory,
rock and boot mud,
air above with voiced winds,
water flowing, thoughtless,
pure
and fire, embers, ashes
you are to me

Off the daily cuff
blood pressure rises,
no real surprise
when this number over that
seems to dictate it all

For it to fall to a level
where there is no dread
of a sudden clutched chest
or brain wildfire
requires time for self care,

And though there’s the rub,
your work will never love you back,
so feel no guilt stepping away
before you crack

Remember a time you weren’t here
and your day rolled free

honey warm joy
holding your soul
in a cwtch

catching their eyes
and shine of smiles,
lining your insides
for days and times like these

we build these pots
and stocks to tide us by
with the benefit
of no selfish deficit

allow yourself a sip
to reminisce
and ease the days
until we can replenish
togetherness

At the core of my being
I reckon there’s oil
and garlic and salt
and probably chilli flakes,
lemon or lime zest and juice,
or orange at my heart

applicable herbs, like basil
thyme, oregano,
always rosemary as it grows

stock cubes
or those new jelly ones
to amuse the palate
in each experiment  

all to hold off the meal deals
we know are coming

Pan - all
Demos - people

Everyone touched and fiddled with
tricked, cut, broken and hauled
across coals that hurt directly
or by degrees

More pernicious than a novel virus,
exposed to the utter selfishness
of folk who won’t even cover their mouths to cough
or at best will wear a cloth across their mouths
but leave their noses to bleed casual indifference

I want to love my fellow man and see them as allies
so I struggle to suppress my surprise
that too many would claw and fling
sad corpses of different colours or origins
to the rising tide
just to stay unhappily dry, never mind alive

Disposable gloved hands stretched out with open hearts,
basic ***** hygiene and an even playing field
are a tiny ask for all

Take a deep (covered) breath,
be deaf to the filthy fear peddlers
who try to cling to power
by screaming vitriol and division
one tweet and cable TV show at a time
and reach instead for the sublime and silly brilliance
of being human

It’s big
and it chews on your thoughts
termite toothed
til you feel your
brain pan is honeycombed
with broken links

To think around it
seems impossible
when from current vantage
you can’t even see its shape

Perspective seems
as hard to find
as eggs and flour

but minutes will hour
hours will day
as always

and time will do it’s thing
turning tragedy
comic

Claw to scratch
itches that you can’t identify,
as if I could ever stoop so low

Nobody told me so
is no excuse, buddy boy,
so stop playing the silly goose

I hate you, bambino,
your stupidity sticky
like sad celluloid
held too long in the gate

We’re through

#done #disappointment #end #humans

Your ubiquity in my memory
has led me to miss
the fact you are now missed

in the day-glo green-yellow
gardens of eighties summers,
scattering mother’s pride,
you were overlooked in the search
for brighter birds
with better song

so I try to cherish the
rattle and chatter
of your extended family
alongside me now

no songs for me
to join your mourning
but your chip-chip banter
tells a cautionary tale

I’ll do my best to listen and learn
even as our own gardens dwindle

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

Still loose, my mind drifts
over coppice, brook,
past fields left fallow
to heal
ragged with sedge, ragwort,
while crickets twitch defiance

Here is where I send myself
as the keyboard walls clatter in
and time returns to rigid
and gravity remembers to hold

Sitting at our distanced picnic,
a moveable feast in which the scotch eggs
probably have deep significance, I said to you
“We’re only ever inches from the cliff.
If left alone we tread steadily. It’s those
other buggers you have to watch out for.”
and the mist on the windows
stopped us seeing more.

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

Stone memory
and earth thought
hurt sometimes
when you remember what was
not is

Life is never pliant
we just have to go with the grain

remaining just to say
we remain

Calling all ears
all guts and sneers
every daft-deft writer who would be
poet

Write your soul, your boots
your fight, your fears,
your misbegotten loves
tucked behind your ears

Roll with punches,
belch and rattle at your stars
as they are truly indifferent
gaseous, asinine orbs

Pull rank on the nothing
my lovely, living friends
as your truth is beginnings and ends
and I love you

#poet #writer #write #love

This ground was thirsty
by god thirsty
been cracking and cursing for months
with only the vaguest hunch of a possible deluge

so these rains were drunk in abandonment
and the angry soil has yielded
soft underfoot, a sole cwtch
to be savoured, felt

the stream, so feeble last week
has remembered its fatness,
wetness, strength
recalling a bearing
thoughts are borne once again
with vigour to the constant sea

As chasms open up to swallow
I’ll eye them carefully
to see if I should cling or dive

The thing about chasms is
that there might be something amazing
at the bottom, that reinvents you

Or there could be spikes and crocodiles,
or spiky crocodiles
with knives

You just never know with chasms

Hearts are funny things
I feel mine rise and fall, jarred
like captured summer fruit
fat in syrup
some days
others, pickled sharp
and tucked away in acetic darkness

It’s not a lie to bring them inside
and pretend spring

with central heating
drying sad eyes and itching skin
at least they offer a semblance
of a truth balefully missed

though the distant future
still promises such
current hands are hamfisted
in the art of wish fulfilment

I began a thought
followed it really closely
until dazzled by a mote of dust
that drifted by me

momentarily dumbfounded
I grasped to catch
where I had been heading
when a cat crossed the garden
and intent on its actions
I stalled once more

I shook my head
and pinned my fingers
to the keyboard
to rattle out important words
but then I wondered
how the Easter Islanders
celebrated Easter
and went down that rabbit hole
for an hour

Resurfacing I finally began
and sentences flowed
for a good five minutes

until I saw
that it was time
for dinner

Sometimes words fall out
vehement, blood high,
incendiary,
meat thought chained
like sausage link
or metal hard train cars
yanked by emphatic engines

Other times the pool swirls
and breezes blow
oppositional
and as lungs slow labour
thoughts drift and slip from place
languid fingers trace ripples
that may mean nothing

The mind needs time to breathe
and holler equally
so we can feed and be fed

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

Bullace
hedge haematoma
blue-black against the fading,
once young green,
bruising for sharp winter thoughts,
clean frost lines,
untouched snow-blank focus

but before, to swell and drop
in the last pale suns,
feed the field mouse, rabbit
and endure the muds

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

I don’t know how
but I’d forgotten days
when rain falls forever
and in every way

so you sit and you look
and you look and you sit
and your mind asks some questions
you’d often forget
and you twiddle and bicker
and hover and thrum
and you start ten endeavours
with no solid outcome

and then night comes and rescues
as pretence can be dropped
and you put on pyjamas
and stop

A red kite passed between the sun and I
momentarily delighting with its shadow,
a shrill cry launched at an empty sky, happy

Hot creosote of neighbours fences
smelt of care and the eighties
while my own untreated panels bleached

By the stream, illegal fishermen dawdled
while the world chose not to care
and for now this snow globe held unshook