The canvas of a summer’s evening
Burning crimsons, golden bright
Sweet embers of this day
Singing with life, alive alive!
While suited ants scurry beneath
The shadow of concrete canopies
Look up, it cries, today I thrive
But how can I, they reply
I am blind in the foliage of the city
Deaf to the rhythm of the sky.

Deep in the woods of Laching bay
Behind green drapes of whispering trees
Lives a fantastic creature,
A delightful friend and teacher.

He has nestled there for centuries
Watching the world pass through reptile eyes
He is as calm as a setting sun,
As reliable as a rising one.

With scales that gleam and glisten,
A rippling rainbow when light finds him.
When Jumaja speaks, everyone listens

Down a long spine a row of spikes stretches
Brimstone and emerald crowns,
Legacies of his enchanted kingdom.
He may tell you in a soft voice, as deep as the ocean,
How it is to be the last of a kind.

Disconnected from time and reality,
The silence screams of dying opportunity
I feel it as it slips through my fingers,
The emptiness weighs of lead
The spaces were another could be,
Caving through my heart and head,
Until there is nothing but echoes left

I lost myself to loneliness-
And it has been the most secretive of thefts

There's a certain kind of magic-
in the surging of the streets,
pounding tired feet,
children squealing,
prams wheeling,
a tide unquelled by grey sky
a sparkle in the dull hope of a scratchcard owners eye

this is the city exhaling fumes
and inhaling dreams

Why do I miss you so much
at 3 am
numb in the day
but when the world is asleep
the memory of you burns my chest
like salt in the wound

the quiet squeezes my heart
the stillness scratches my chest

kept company by the winking stars
that have seen it all before
watched these wounds turn to scars
a million times before

you are the space between my words
and their echoes
you are the empty part of me
that nobody knows
and nobody sees

In the prime of my youth
I'm already tired of this world
it's battles and loneliness
Yet buried deep within
is a hope I hide from crashing waves
and howling winds of passing pains
A hope undulled by lessons learnt
and fingers burnt
I shelter a candle of endless patience
Beneath my armour of dissapointed youth

I wait for more
A hand to hold
A world to explore
A life to mould

On the verge of my twenties
And I feel quite empty
Although perhaps that is best to think-
I am an empty page, inviting the splash of ink

Hello sadness my old foe
An unwelcome face I’ve come to know
Walking through walls I built so high
With bricks of feathers, but the will to try
You crush my caged bird of steely resolve
And with it’s flightless wings does my hope dissolve
A haunting shadow present day and night
Whispering Give up the fight, give up the fight
But you come and go; a regrettable guest
Soon, I will degrade you to a whimsical test.
My body is my temple, and my mind shall rule-
Only those guests who never leave,
-dreams, memories, friends as thick as thieves
Will have a final say in the way of my life-
I will never let you win this wretched strife.