mind and thought are not the least bit important, once free,
they only find meaning and usefulness when they are taken in and received
by those of whom these words have brought pain and joy and fear;
as a parched land holds less water:
moist terrains host more aqueous bodies

when reasons
have changed, 
transformed along

with circumstances 
defined by those we
have allowed into our

             life 

shaping us 
charging us
releasing us

and giving new days
their tints and shades;
now to open up jugular 

and allow hatchets to fall 
or celestial hosts in array,
rouses breath-bound to sing.*




_ _ __ ✒
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°

' 

shadowed 
in early evening's 
darkened corner 

his smile 
responds to your 
gruff remark 

and you 
do not see 
the tear 

rolling 
from his cheek 
he turns 

the faintest hint 
of sadness 
cloaks his eye






____✒
○●
°

Of late you've taken
to staring past 
fork-strewn dinner plates; 

tines pinging like tuning forks, 
precise and crystalline: 

from scratches on writing pads, 
to clacking on fading keyboard tiles, 
to taps on smudged touch screens -- 

thoughts and feelings exiled, martyred 
for existence beyond skull and ribs. 

Of late your chin
bobs involuntarily
to strains of melodies; 

countering the blare of radio beats, and
no one sees this march to your own drums.

Curiosity killed no cat, but martyrs, by
betrayal, our most private thoughts
and feelings are divulged.*



_ _ _ ✏
●○
°

on fedora hat
getting very fat
cat did sit

everyone here

getting very fit
or gloating with
green-eyed leer*




●○
°

brioche mornings
bright, sunny
fluffy moorings

cast away

off sun kissed
horizon, ne'er set
dreams astray



●○
•

Spectre of once ago celebration
Shadows slither on pages, marked
Silence syncopated fonts mêlée
Scream for a song now similarly lost
Where within these words will
Soul's centre be again found?

There is now a dull,
unidentifiable fondness
that sometimes surfaces --
a phantom itch
that when scratched
returns into the depths.

a solitary avian
fork tailed violet
happened upon
a sylphid sprite
the one gave song

the other gave a
sentinel's vow
back to back
through eons
secrets keep

staring down these last few
scoops of laundry powder
and pouring out from these
last few caps of softener
looking back a couple of
months when it was tough
deciding to unseal these
products in case word
came from that latest job
prospect now seems suspect
-- guess that new box of
detergent will be opened
next wash and a trip to
obtain fabric conditioner
is all there is left of this
agenda of personal improv!

What have you done:
Given voice to silence,
Wings to unspoken thoughts,
Face to emotions deeply masked;
Solid darkness now made bright
When words unutterable take flight
Making them no longer alone.

Masks are real, masks are useful
But they aren't the issue
to be perfectly truthful.
It's more beneficial to pursue
The trajectory of a shoe;
And before we've lost our teeth;
What's truly important, you see,
Isn't what covers but what lies beneath!

cease turning my green to grey
with wilful acts of nature
your heart is found in theirs
providing for the urgency
to lose love's indifference,
redeem that part of self
that once felt only for you*






____✒
○●

What's so black about Saturday?
our world was dark and sombre
a stone blocked the entrance
and all humanity went on
about its recalcitrant way.
Panic in the streets of
Birmingham,  NY & LA
Nietzsche most solemnly declares
God is dead, we're beyond repair!
Lost in the dark of sabbath
We fade in dimned* light
Pleading with this buried saviour
'Help us make it through the night.'
But the blood's bled dry
And so has the wine
All that's left is a sigh
And part of a loaf, crusted and dry.
If God's truly dead and buried
then why is it we're still alive?
What's so black about Saturday?
The continuance of inner fears
of hidden insecurities and
projected uncertainties.
What if that stone won't roll away?
What if a rotting corpse, its
inescapable stench meets our face?
rivers of evil running, through our veins
cruising the Styx with zombiec glee.
All hail, rejoice this dark melody
we're going to hell by self decree.
Join the punishment of the undead,
in a pit roast for all of eternity.
But then again all that's required
is the tiniest drop of faith to find
the blackness of Saturday darkness
bequeaths its grasp at break of day.
Even fairy tales provide an escape
and this inescapable reality has no hold
over faith and resurrection power.
For all the trouble we go through in life
I'd rather believe the good book's promise
than Satan's ruse to raise a zomboid army.
And these riddles circle in my head
of possibilities that God most
certainly is not dead!

from adverse direness
is revealed a humble key:
in letting go, we are set free!*




●○
°

the "Valley of Vision"
has caught my eye
lay captive my heart
captured my wandering mind

your cup sends me reeling
a haughty tower trembling
never again to be rebuilt

two men once hung from a tree
the one cursed his life upon himself
the other condemned eternally

neither the valley nor in the plain
did the eye cast its mark
felled by projectile true
a day no one can rue

psychological warfare 101
oldest trick in the book
throw it back in their faces
without remorse or afterthought




●○
°

a dollop of selsun blue
brought back memories of you
as did the last drops of clairol essence
bring back herbal scents on nanna's hair
water washes clean stray thoughts
and even with its ebbing, fading moon
late night, this year is still new

~

a single drop
however large this pond might be

shall ripple
until its furthest bounds
for all the whole, wide world to see

each drop
a poem's clarion ever sounds



_ _ __ ✒
○●
°

is always a poem after this one;
an understudy to today's centre stage:

this poem however, is never unimportant,
as individual as the poem that follows;
many poems have unwritten forbears-
each is breathed and lived; rarely spoken.

this poem's panorama is found in one place –
a window of its reader's imagination;
so each poem is just a beginning point
of new journeys that we join with the poet.

another is birthing at the end of this one;
there may be several, in fact, awaiting their turn.*




_ _ __ ✒
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°

breathe:

      all else

      is
        do
          wn
            wa
                rd
                     spin*


○●
°

Feet throb through well worn shoes
after a brisk walk to central station.
We keep our ears plugged with our beats
to finally find seated, at furtherest point;

Backs of heads, napes, and collars
mushroom away, stare blankly ahead -
polarised sunnies paint them bright;
choked only by an assumption of gain.

And all we see is a tiny reflection of we.
Here in our world another day begins:
a mourning of suited, tired paramours;
in this cosmos of peopled isolation.

my child runs
into the room,
looks and yells
honey badger!
then, lets rip

perhaps you hung
around him a
little more than

what made for
awkwardness

call it hero
worship - infantile
idolatry; or just

a deep-seated
longing for an
older brother

that you never had

tall, smiling
confident;
nobody's fool

your rescuer when
you released the handbrake
sending dad's cadillac flying

downhill-
lumbering projectile
ravaging through

his mum's front hedge
over their pool,  onto
bar stools and wine bottles

Stevie hopped in, grabbed
and steered and braked
but nothing was never

ever the same again

'

He sometimes feels he may be blind, 
or just afraid of what others see. 
And what he speaks or sees or thinks 
is never what they reckon it should be. 
He is careful, vigilant, and repressed 
'coz in their light he is forever undressed. 






____✒
○●
°

▪



today's a gift, wrapped; 

            yesterday, now peeled open, 

                                tomorrow reveals





_ _ __ ✒
●○
°

A final click breaks through dense
silence :                                       after
whining spin cycle de crescendo.
From inside womb-like metal tub
emerges a once bright red garment,
its fabric faded, worn, and frayed.

seek to be bold,
extend kindness,
on the other side
of whatever this

may be; out there
someone loves you
it's soppier than
honey or gloop

but yours alone
and you flick the
switch at night
every lights-out

Here, at my desk
I find myself,
pen in hand, again.
But now, bereft of faith,
no longer knowing why I write:
a moth returning to naked flame.

The reason for our articulation
is simple and utilitarian-
we do not seek perfection,
But we seek an ablution.

Perfection is reserved for those
with time to spend and money to burn.
Our soul require absolute release,
its ransom necessitates recompense:

Expiated expeditiously, in a flurry
of words that scathe our every thought.

in its purest form
the simplest of
possible affirmations
is to be loved in return

in similar manner
the most complex of
probable affirmations
is reciprocating like affection

in conclusion, then,
it seems most apparent
to appreciate with reckless
abandon the air we breathe

for we build tomorrows
on these simplest, most
basic of molecules, our
humble bricks of being

Etched in my heart, patterned chiselling emotion

Under foot the mossy down through forgotten paths

jolted by breath, your air reminds me of that time

now you have gone away into the sun and shade

playing and wandering in another clime and place

among countless souls all tucked neatly away

behind numerous stone markers, row upon row

like counting bits of sand too numerous to hold

whose gravelly grains have scattered in my mind

reflecting serenely what once was yours and mine*




_ _ __ ✏
○●
°

You aren't ready for the day until you've visited the bathroom and spruced up, groomed up, and psyched up.


Mirrors.

Mirrors are not my favourite bathroom fixture....or anywhere else. I must have been somewhat scarred as a school child to feel this way about something as silly as a mirror. 'Mirror, mirror on the wall....' so goes a wonderful phrase in a familiar children's story. Is it not logical to have handy a magical mirror?

The only time a mirror finds any usefulness to me is when I need to keep my hair in place or pick out some zit or the occasional comedo. Otherwise it is, I find, something best ignored or avoided.

Weighing Scales.

Weighing scales are another bathroom item that give me that slightest flutter in the tummy of a morning. Having always been just a hair under the average height and weight has given me a momentary dread of using the scales. The school nurse would queue us up and then take our vital statistics and that was by far one of the cruellest and most excruciating of annual reality checks. Scales..... comparisons... mirrors.... horrors.....

Denial is far more comfortable a choice.

here on my knees
surrounded again
by familiar emptiness

and here You are
facing me square
amid my barrenness

all I have had, now have
and all I'll ever have
is You and You alone

where else can I turn
what else can I say,
'show me what's next'*


●○
°

to firmly believe there is
always opportunity for
a horse-carriage ride
through Central Park
despite chaotic impediment
amid the throng and buzz;
that is where living begins

Wherever I go
You come too.

we no longer burn bridges
and though we'd never need to
cross back over them again

we build new ones, upstream,
up closer, so much closer
to the heart of our dreams*


●○
°

bursting forth on any
given typical day, we
delve into mysteries
of bath bomb bubbles;
while here in a corner,
ever-vigilant keeper
of ember-like ghostlight,
sentinel of our night,
scribe of thought and
companion of heart:
connects green room
to footlit centre stage

°

its good to see you 
back writing again ... 
you have a touch 

of something that 
makes your writing 
unique ... individual

I've never put 
my finger on it ... 
and would rather 
        not 
      know these days ... 

I enjoy the poetry ;) 
knowing too much 
would take off its shine.



_ _ __ ✒
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°