in an air conditioned supermarket

I had an existentialist crisis in an aisle of mayonnaise, too many choices and to much colour, I dropped my basket and fled to the door, down the hallway and through the cobbled lanes –

I hummed the last song I heard, threw my wallet in the bin and headed for the trees forgetting all my passwords
the crematorium chimney reached up – it’s brick arm searching for stars – the smoke became the clouds and it rained dust for days

Roman numerals have always confused the hell out of me

Mummy, it’s all connected and it’s all collapsing

****** at a safe distance

death via video conference call massacre

a force field of bureaucracy

faceless names at the bottom of letters

the secretaries know where the bodies are buried

they are selling up

the ship is going down and I saw them making tiny holes in the life jackets

I wear crime scene tape to hold up my trousers and in this weather

my lips swelled the blood turned blue – or shades of –

a pale skin red when raw

ointment for the rash

balms for the bruised

– Iater my tongue tasted metallic

tasted of iron

like I was ******* on a nail –

ssssssh

listen to yourself

burp and gurgle and burble and

when you shake your head

side to side

your eyes can’t focus

and you get a headache

and passersby offer help

and words of support

or commiseration
(it’s hard to differentiate

sometimes

a helping hand

or a fist in the face)

– and you think of buster Keaton and the falling house…

the way he stood perfectly poised while the house fell

and he knew he wouldn’t come to harm

but you thought the whole edifice would collapse on his little head –

flapping butterfly wings inside the wardrobe with the skeletons

fireflies circle the bulb

a low wattage casts small shadows over this thing
                         over this everything
of empty petrol station forecourts

wastelands of concrete where shoes hang from telegraph wires
and of all the stereotypes I know
  how many of them are true?

she frantically searches the book shelves for the answers and writes angry letters to the council about the lack of WI-FI at the local library

she sits on the roof to get a better view of the constellations which she can’t see from down here

the song was set on a space station orbiting earth
the astronauts were eating powdered food and trying to remember what
ice cream tasted of they couldn’t find the words to describe vanilla

in Russian Stalin banned jazz

he ordered all trumpets to be buried 300 miles from Stalingrad

yesterday was national poetry day and no one knew

outside hailstones have been falling on and off for an hour or so
spring now, but possibly still winter
the calendars could be lying

the washing machine is gurgling in another room

my cat ate my fish

my cat died when I was on a school trip

my bird fell off his perch and never knew he hit the ground

the news is on the radio and
words are jumping from its belly
something about a ******
Russian involvement

she told me this morning she dreams of dead children

I’ll leave this here
I’ll finish my tea then I’ll be off

New Boy Scout badges:

•web design

•economics

•glutton free cooking

•metaphysical philosophy

•Bowieism