I’ve come to realise
That I find Lake Klinwel boring;
Ignoring the skies,
The flight of birds
And their curving dives.
This lake, drowned by eyes,
Instead choosing to reflect static towers
That are monuments to Machiavelli,
Where the financially ambitious
And their crisp paper voices spend
Their days, evenings.
Money in the bank for tomorrow
Plan ahead, plan ahead,
That what the lake said
When I visited.

What freedom
Such a wonder of nature
Has to manipulate and
Reinterpret the harshness
In lines that ascend until they
Scrape the sky,
That tears, simple as tissue.

And all the while,
Cigarette butts,
In an abstract delinquency,
Revise community buildings and council offices
Where surely they dream of hole punch
And green lights and confirmation and deadline for appeal
Whilst bureaucrats administer more paper cuts to the teal-blooded sky and Risk Assessments have given a score to death—
Awarding it a number five.

The lake can surely stay awake
Just long enough to show me ripples
And normality when I drop in a stone,
Just a sound that
Confirms this mind is still my own,
That the waking world is known to me,
Dreams are dreams alone,
They are the ripples reaching the sea
From my daring stone.
To be beside a lake, lyrically alone,
Brings a pain that is most obvious and physical
And so I ask once more for the
Most minute of tides for my sore, tired eyes—
Just a ripple of two to the other side
Where I see a figure,
Where I see blue eyes,
Where I see extravagant dress and
Hair so shapely they say and yet
I couldn't care less.
It could be a wig
But the wind tells me it is not,
And her nose sits among a gang of features,
Knowing surely it turns heads—
Growing heavier with each turned.

The lake spat on my shoe and continued
To reflect the tall commercial towers
Whilst this green space is vast,
Boasting bowers where I sit with a pencil
And I see the birds of paradise
Impressively dancing and dancing impressively.
Sublime in fact!
But I think they are trespassers
We should kindly send them back
Their hearts are excessively small
And no longer in paradise,
Not close to it at all.

I’m done with you, lake!
Lake Klinwell, lazy deceptive mirror!
Are you depressed?
Disenchanted?
Do I notice how you are growing ever thinner?

I heard news that our
Town is crumpling in certain corners,
It’s folding in two like a map closing.
People are dreaming with recurring themes
And the flowers bow their heads
Just in case.

Oh, you are a soft, sensitive lake,
Let me dip my feet.
Do not fear for the town we share,
Do not quake, dear lake,
And enjoy your daylit hours
In the company of the trees and flowers.

I beg you though:
One day,
When I need it most,
Reflect for me a memory:

Diana and I on the corrugated coast,
Careless on the rocks,
I failed to enjoy it at the time through fear
but she leapt, crossed a gap to get to me.
She landed with a kiss.

And if you could add a sunset,
The weather was terrible.

The weathervane slept high above with a lolling head.
Clouds were holidaying excessively in Spain.
Sun was lost in a haze after chain smoking cooling towers.
A lethargic wind, moseying low with cat-like whiskers,
I hear it complain “I’m tired” in child-like whispers.

My hands are sweat-sore with callouses
And salty enough to summon the call of gulls in numbers;
I find shade, imagining myself as a cartoon Huck Finn.
When I put dry grass between cracked lips and think of dustbowls
In a zoetrope of sun-stroke, I vanish through my buttonholes.

This is now where one would rise, wake or come to.
Nothing I recognise, else the world is enveloped in storms.
I strain my sight, blink repeatedly to force myself awake,
The angels are listening, I hear wheezing, see fingers in my dreams
Gripping tightly to milk thistle stars, bursting at the seams.

Amongst the angels, whispering too! Did the stars imprison you?
Free-spirit like mother, but I slept our childhood through
Sustained by knowledge gleaned from canteen floors—
My eyes feel somehow sharp, heavy, like spears more than eyes;
I thought I saw the weathervane spinning madly, unraveling the skies!

Nobody talks about the weather.
There is a good chance of wrought nerves.
This is a time of stillness and dwelling on doorsteps,
In doorways where death sits among us, resting his eyes,
An end to the ration that was harmless reminiscence
As memories go up in the heat like celluloid;
Now the stars are a steely prison
Heaven’s lustre is lost, missing.
Through the angels I have seen that this is a time of living -
Through our dreams I have seen that this is a time of living -
Outside the confinement of the Holocene.




*—I have dreamt of drowning...often. I always seem to wake up out and breath and feel I can taste the salt in my mouth but fear does not play any part in these dreams.