silence is silent -
it sneaks up on you like a deadline
slithers its way out of the drawers in your mind - past the ticking watch your dad gave you
down the scrape of the office chair across your bedroom floor
dances with the tip-tapping keys of your keyboard and it lies,

in weight; bunk-buddies with your earworm that's been casting; their-
show-stopping
rendition of
a
latest song
-  then the real thing shows up and makes everything dead quiet.

numb, dumb thump hum thumbing in my ear -
crickets
keys
cars
the march of a duvet
smothering my brain

barely heard the light go off as I pondered the ink lake above me dould not even remember, when it all went so
silent

He took off his jacket, and he looked... smaller than I could ever have thought him to have been. All of a sudden, the impenetrable guise of the pillar I had come to know and resent had disappeared…no crumbled.
Crumbled and hunched over like a pillar of sandstone with no weight to bear down on his shoulders.
It looked like I had chipped and chipped away at a block of marble hoping to find a Greek god’s statue. An ode to greater men before my time but I must have gone too far.
Excavated too deep because I found rock and rubble pouring out of the crevice I had made. And now there he was, no longer a mass of stone barreling forward to a dream or an ideal, not a weeping stoic I hoped I could fix but a sandbag that I had slit open and now its contents lay there. Sagging over itself in the shape of a human

silver tears streak across the horizon.
bare backs shilt the weight of travellers
they can only cry to each other,
screeching for companionship - as they grow hot under a cloud  -  less
sky than later in that day when it was pouring
and they couldn't see
blitzing across the grassland when
ERCH
the pair embrace
and a toppled trolly not so far down the way-
there -
right there!
I think I hear someone screaming!
There might be survivors

"it happened so fast  -
we just derailed"

bland perfume! i
INSULT your un-proprietary-ship-
like behaviour of letting
your
scent
drift everywhere and anywhere in cakes and eggs - you and
your indifference that grants you ownership of roads.
you bean with legs that run amock across my dishes
   weeping easy smiles and a cool 'hey'
to the ingredients in my kitchen          - oh -
how they swoon at your cheap fancies how
they value the banal and cherish you -
the extraordinary mediocre.

Honey-rays drizzle through the peakings in branches,
Diamond-sparkles in my eyes.
Flecks of golden sunlight pour
Landing on the shaded grass. Through the misty green
Veil of sparsen
strings my eyes to the pond before me
We lounge with the soil, haunt the declining hours
Burning nostrils with poignant air with inhales that seem too short
Lungfulls that leave
Under foliage – time is nought
Water still, our time is caught
Eve creeps red across the lawn
And soon we must pack and leave
I pack our things – as I always do – carry them still
Seeking you, I turn and shuffle
Cascading leaves, and deep breaths
Mosquitoes bred have come to feast
The shade has spread, no need for trees
I steal a glance at the static pond, its meditation poison
Its presence stable
Peak the stealing gait,
That retreats towards the blacked lawns
Its footfall fervent, its placing sure.

my fingernails have gone missing.
I seldom have the time for them to seek
missing appendages slink down the hollow crevices
down my gullet I will climb and tear
and crunch and topple and
consume my way up mountain tops I
can feel the rain bearing on me
the obesity of the grey sky drag at my audacity
to bleed my way up
not only my path but His path
and Her method

is that I will forge upwards
and behold my dramatic irony
where my thick skin and my snotty nose
and my teary eyes
with coveted gaze I will scream

I WANTED WINGS
atop the mountain, I would have flown to.