a season of plain white t-shirts against corrugated iron fences that rust expensive trainers
seasonal adjustment and a dropped stitch

chimney stacks arthritic broken fingers of the broken landscape
horizon of scratched surfaces

little children running into trees and

disappearing into shilouttes of long shadows
they moved the furniture to confuse the blind

Sometimes I forget that I am
me,

my memory is made up of affectionate toothpaste ads
of the past three decades.

On occasions I think I’m John Lennon
returning his CBE
over to that Biafra thing.

the rain wet floor
the man with a birth mark in the shape of Pangea

the backwards baseball cap

the re-used meme

the re-used meme

the idea of “retro”

cumulus clouds floating

heavy &

overhead

all electrical goods just sitting on stand-by

waiting

the machines are waiting

the blueprints that are 1mm out
at right angles to the rest of the world neon lights flash downtown

reflected on wet concrete

arriving at a destination and not knowing how you got there
my glasses leave an indentation on the side of my head
my children are asleep and I can see the signs

a new Netflix series that goes on for 125weeks – I have no stamina for this –

the mundane beauty of a leisure centre
the perfection of the shopping mall

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 –