Five steps or five thousand                                        
Her gait is just the same

Poets, painters
Can be tortured souls

But gardeners
Are at one with the world

No screens flash
No keyboard clicks

A woman she must prove her worth
Hood up, body bent
Her conversation polite

But minimal
Her gaze steadfast
Down to earth

Her gloved hands
Coaxing life from the bedraggled
Winter flower bed

As soon as you heard the rain,
you came in like a hurricane.

                                             Destroyed everything

and claimed I was to blame.

Then didn't even try to clean up what's left,
just moved the mess from one room to the next.

We're oh so close in our hearts and souls
but
our minds are so distant
might as well be antiscians.
Even though I see you in my nightly visions,
and you cross all my thoughts with capital Ts,
and I dot all your eyes with kisses from butterflies.
I know your disguise is comprised completely of lies
like both of your faces are living 2 separate lives.

In the darkness I scream
but
I don't speak.
In the darkness I dream
but
I don't sleep.
All I hear is the clock

tick-tocking
and it's
sick mocking.

I think it is laughing at me, for being half as happy
as I claim that I am.
You can only place so much blame on a man
before you find him laying in the sand,
thinking he should stayed when he ran.
So now I'm feeling dim
but
not quite dull.
Which means my mind is sharp
but
something is wrong with my *soul.

I am no longer
the hollow of my collarbone
or the skin on my thighs
I am no longer
the frailty of my bones
or the space between my legs
I am the words
that flow from my lips,
and the way they curl and disappear
into the lungs of strangers
like smoke from a cigarette
I am the warmth I feel
when I hold you in my arms
I am the way I sing when
I’m afraid, attempting to find
light in a world full of dark
I am not my body, for it is
just a shell that holds my true
self; I am me,
and I am beautiful.

Write a poem
Simple enough
Words on paper
Grammar incomplete
Diction obsolete
How hard could it be
To be a poet

After all, it’s line after line
A few words at a time
Throw in a twist
A rhyme or a list
Of
Single
Words
See, I did it too
How hard could it be
To be a poet

And what’s that nonsense
Deep metaphors
And soul windows death doors
Throw in a few phrases
Laugh at the mazes
Of meaning and subterfuge
A Monet in The Louvre
Who can tell if you’re right or wrong
Because it’s poetry and poetry’s song
Written out in words that have barely got a beat
Kinda like Thanksgiving with only bone without the meat
How hard could it be
To be a poet

But it is hard
Because it’s not about
Rhyme or reason
There is not formula
For the words on the page
For the way the ink smudges
Or the words tend to run
The tears that paint your face
The paintbrush that paints that vase
Poetry is not so easy
It’s the mind at it’s home speaking a language of it’s own
It’s when tongue is too slow
To encumbered
To lazy
To hide the nuance in it’s niche
To hide the complexity in it’s written form
***** rhyme
**** meter
Because it’s not about the count of the syllable
The references to parable
It’s about the heart behind the head
Pushing word out of word
From the ink on the page
To the hearts of another age
So how hard is it to be a poet?
It’s easy
Write freely.

When even the ironing is ironed out flat and the world is still turning,(no doubt about that)
I can sit here and wander through roads so familiar and realise it's so similar to how it used to be.
Still raining and damp which gives me a cramp or a touch of arthritis,but I'm not complaining,it's something to do with the year I was born in.
There's a cat watching me from halfway up the tree,it seems he's been there a long time,sometimes his black eyes meet mine,sometimes I turn away,if he's there every day then so am I.
And we both go along as indeed time goes by,
both watching
both waiting
the cat up the tree
and me.