Eyes of an old book prophet
Clothes made of furs and coloured rags
Makes her way down the aisle of the bus
With her whole life
In two
Over full
Unwieldy
Duffle bags
To stand, where else?
But right in the middle
Hands tight on the rail
A modern day Ahab
Steering her own ship
She speaks in tongues
“The man in the yellow shirt called me a ****** backed *****”!
Those that can see her stare straight through
The others smile at someone next to them
Strangers sharing concerns
The separate joined by a sudden, fleeting sadness
Underneath
They are in awe of her
All disturbed by her
This woman
This lone traveller
Each tic
Each barely controlled muttering
A reminder
A pointer
Towards their own
Suspected
Madness

Convinced as I am
That life is a circle
I don’t always welcome
The feeling
Of all its
360 degrees

From never really knowing how to start
From stilted to flow
From what I wanted to be
To what I turned out as
From thinking I was one thing
To finding I’m quite a few
From not being good with my hands
From not thinking in straight lines
From not concentrating
From not speaking my mind
From not telling the truth even when I was asked
From not having the same ideas
From not loving things in the same way
From not wanting to make birds fly back home
From wanting to stand in the shed with them
With my eyes closed
Until their curiosity made them silent
From too much time spent looking at the stars
From not seeing them as just slowly burning Hydrogen
From asking too many questions
From not having answers
From even now thinking hearts won’t get broken
From not having the words to fix them

From song lyrics
From scribbled words
From good ideas at the time
From hitting the iceberg at 35
From being pulled out of the wreckage by forgiving hands

I am from here

Beneath Polaris and the Plough
The way things look
And
How they really are
A million light years in between

Adrift in nebulae and swirl
And yet
Numbers for constellations
Names given to stars
All hung in my own stellar picture
Framed
By singular perspective

Who would gaze at me?
Satellite
In slow orbit of my own sun
Obeyer of physics
Captive of unseen pull
Consequence
Of unrelenting gravity
Me

Witness to the solar flare
The magic of the comet’s tale
Slowly turn
I watch the universal
Silent spin
Through this cosmic play eternal
The glow of distant suns
Some, so long ago
Their fire already gone

In between the late  news
And the weather
She abandoned her own expected forecast
Deciding to throw all her cautions
To any of the four winds that would have them

Through the rush of the morning
She stayed still
And later with the house quiet
Went out into the garden
And stood in the rain
Until it made rivers of her arms
And a water fall of her hair

When the evening brought its storm
Of whys and whats
She let it rage through her
As if she were an empty house
And when it was spent
She held it in her arms
And became the calm

Hypothetical child
Born of the what if
Words from a distant would be mother
Have placed you
In the eyes of others
And now I cannot look
For fear that my heart will break
In everyday places

Now that you’re happy with him
Do you still feel the bruise
The one you told me he left that one time
Do you still get checked
For the smell of other men
Did all that end
The day you told him you’d had enough
Of him
His suspicions
When you were changing rules
Shifting roles
Do you think he knew
That someone
Somewhere
Still had had your taste
In the back of his throat