Laughable
Affable
Reachable
Near

Damnable
Mandible
Crucible
Bone­

Icicle
Tricycle
Sensible
Fear

Inevitable
Dependable
Dispensabl­e
Stone

A throwaway.
Not for posterity.
Not for unborn archaeologists
To extract caked with mud.
Not to be hidden from the sun
Under a millennia of detritus.

Just for now.
Just for this bit of time
When nobody needs you immediately,
And nobody expects you to deliver,
And nobody is depending on you.

Just for these moments.
Just to share a bit of your space-time
While the sun finds a gap in the branches
And drives the chill from the room.
While the office has emptied for lunch
And a breath can be taken in peace.
While the hum of the bus/train/plane
Has lulled your fellow travellers to sleep.

Just to see some words gathered
Purely for their affinity to one another.
Just for the love of pictures
Painted in your head alone.
For when just one more read through
Is purely for the pleasure
Of sitting awash in an idea.

Throwaway.
A handful of words.
Just for you.

Come down from the mountains
In coarse weave and wool,
Come down at the break
Of the iced inky night.
Upon smoke-spouting horses
Come down to the river
And drink deeply of its cold and black.

It got here before you
Melting, tumbling, weaving between stones
Coursing and dropping without caution.
And while you lay languid
Upon meadow grasses
And the bay shuffles, hobbled,
And crops at the green,
It will pool deeply at the bend in the river
And be gone before you awake.

No voice could call
From my sandpaper throat.
The script written
In a watercolour ink,
Left the pages blank
After the rain.
Clutching a weathered branch
On an overhanging rocky ledge,
Legs dangled into the abyss.
Finally, a reaching arm
From the quicksilver mirror
Pulled me back
To the rabbit hole within.

There is something
                    Electric
                  in the air

As a new,
     ...original
                ...idea
       is conceived
        in the belly
of the World.

The morning breaks like a jagged jam jar, the sun burns through like a stinking cigar, the time moves forward like a lethal lahar, and yet another day is burning.

And another one now, they just keep coming, there's no escape here, your brain needs numbing, you're tangled in wire and perplexing plumbing, and none of it's worth what you're earning.

Sometimes we think we've got a pretty perfect path, but as you get close it instead wreaks wrath, still we all want what the other half hath, but material goods don't quell yearning.

You could do more, you could work wonders, your heart says yes, but feet bestow blunders, as one thing leaps another thing thunders. It leaves your whole world churning.

But a light will emerge between the tall trees, the heat will fade with the fall's brisk breeze, you'll find warmth where you formerly freeze, you'll find inspiration returning.

Because humanity thrives on problems perverse, people have recovered from way, way worse,  a chasm wasn't made we didn't try to traverse. 'Cause the things we beat down, set us learning.

Night has well and truly fallen
And laying in bed
The sounds
Of crickets and cicadas
Sizzles in from the windows.
Though my eyes grow heavy,
I try to write a poemmmmm........¡zzzzz 0

When a rain-storm surprised the city
Passers-by looked down with pity
At a large group of nutters
Inspecting the gutters
An unfortunate planning committee.

They decided today was good timing
Below-streets they soon were climbing
Where the gutters connect
To the sewers they checked
And all got a very good sliming.

The day leaves me somewhat melancholy
Due to a story I heard recounted.
It's about a life, a love, a death observed
By a stranger across a garden.

From afar she saw the pieces played
Unfolding as the months went by.
From happiness and living pleasant lives
To weakness, despair and loss.

I, just a random listener with a radio
The story makes me pause.
I identified with the tragic soul
Not the observer from afar.

Do I stop and reconsider now
The path on which I live?
Do I think ahead and enjoy this
Comfort and security while it lasts?

We're curious things, we humans
When confronted with mortality.
Loath to break free of our routines
And so to face possibilities so dire.

Everyone lauds the sunny day
They lavish them with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
In warmth and golden haze.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When the day dawns bleak and grey,
To find the joy of heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And oh, the ones with pouring rain?
Many call them vile
The drum of raindrops on one's roof
Brings to me a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
You declare it all so rotten.
Yet my heart gets a pleasant lift
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now slush-and-sleet-filled days in March
Are a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And bring to no one pleasure.

It erodes the denizens' state-of-mind
Optimism quite diminished
Everyone with tempers short
All wishing it were finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one getting huffy,
A golden sun that rules the sky
And clouds so big and fluffy.

"Lost love spell caster voodoo spells"
The spammy text-posts read
Let's write them off, as so much bunk
That nobody would heed.

"Love marriage specialist
in Ahmedabad" said another
Finally you could be betrothed
And satisfy your mother!

Voodoo spells and marriage vows
For only a few rupees,
The challenges of life, all quickly solved,
With very modest fees.

A thin tendril of wispy stuff
Threads in-between and around the heavy planks
Binding them together
As they float directionless off-shore.
All aboard lounge about
As listless as their path,
Floating this way,
Then that.
Surrounded by steam-belching tugs
That **** and jostle the drifting raft
Go that way,
Now go this.

Ultimately low on coal,
And with a weaker head of steam.
Soon they move away disinterested
Leaving the lounging raft-bound hoard
Never having found the controls
Nor recognizing the cardinal points on the compass
They hold over their heads as a talisman.

A handful of truth and answers
Sprinkled over the upward-turned faces
Eyes closed, mouths agape
Desperate for puzzle pieces
So long assured of what they would look like
They bounced off foreheads
And shoulders
And fell down around their feet
And were left trampled and unrecognized
Still blowing about in little skiffs
Around the edges of the field
After all had gone.

Catch the one
You beckoned to fall
Down to you.
It came easily then
Out of the deep black sky.

Too hot, unless you played it
Quickly from hand-to-hand.
Too bright
As it glowed and sparkled.
Too beautiful;
Blinding, rare and exotic.

Quickly, you find,
You cannot find a ladder soon enough
Nor tall enough
To replace the jewel
Back from whence it came.

It was better there
If only you had known.

the fiery ember-glow of the appointed hour
beckons the hour-hand closer

starchy, stiffened footsteps
of the structured ticktock routine
fracture first then crumble into powder
swept away by stampede winds

forget it then
the charred and brittle caress
of the silver-for-chains bargain

instead there will be
lemon and lilac-flower music
sand dune and landslide gestures
and heavy maple-syrup glances
deep into a crude-oil quicksand night.

Roses are red
Red as the whistling howl of fiery winds
As we stumbled into a crowd
Of rusty desert sandstone boulders
Sitting parched and abraded by time.

We'd baked all day
Surviving bouts of blowing sand
And so we crouched as thermal refugees
In the scant shadow of the boulders
Hopeful for an extra hour of life
Before the wind and sand and heat
Would claim us to our last drop.

Red.
Our skin too was red
Burnt like paper set alight
That never really catches flame
But is consumed by a glowing linear ember
Under the relentless sun.

Somehow we remained there
Against hot red sandstone
Saying nary a word
Greedy for the moisture
That would escape on our breath
Moving only to track the patch of shadow
As it moved methodically around the boulders.

When finally the murderous sun
Gave up and slunk away
The sky turned deep red with twilight.
The only words anyone spoke
When someone said
"Roses are Red"
But nobody had a tendril of energy
Left to extend beyond pure survival
To do anything with it.

"I'm changing my name" she said
"I've just met my father for the first time"
She said
Payment rings through
In transaction for a *** of tea
The gathered paraphernalia handed over in exchange.
I had little to offer in return
To my smiling young barista
A friendly tendril for a familiar face in the shop
An eagerness to share some part of her life
Even though time and place
Offer little option for elaboration
For sating her need to say it to herself again
The enthusiasm around a momentous life event
A few kind words the final part of the transaction
Then the scoop of tea leaves
And some hot water
And a fragile white porcelain cup.

There are no words today
The shopkeeper told his patrons.

They gathered bereft seeking sublime phrases
Poems of love and loss
But he could offer them none.

There are no words today
He told them.
No typeset letters upon the page
No phrases crafted of sinew and strength
Or of weakness and failing.

They pressed on with their day then
Without their fix of crafted words
To scribble waxen-colour inside their lines
They were left to contour their own imagery
And look about them for hue and tone and rhyme.

Lost then in clichés and quotations
For day after subsequent day
Used words were read over and again
Off ***** or torn sheets
Or passed hand-to-hand on gritty streets
And stapled and taped
To telephone poles and fences.

There were no words for the patrons
On that day and since
And their unspent coins
Brought them no respite
For the disquiet in their hearts.

Wending my way through the work week
Wearily, Wednesday washes away
Wise to our whistful wishes
While weary as we wander towards the weekend
Without wisdom of why we are waiting
Rather than wrestling our woes into submission.

Slap slap slap
Bare feet upon the path of stones
Cool and smooth and grey
Ephemeral condensate footprints
Vanish within a heartbeat
Of each foot lifted

Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding
As I turned out the lights last night?

Were you in the closet as I came into the bedroom?
Did you seep like a flood
Across the floor in the darkness
Rising up the leg of the bed
And into my ears like liquid toxic waste?

Were you under the pillow
And as my fingers slid under there
Between the crisp, smooth layers of white cotton?
Did you coil about my fingers
And up my arm
To spread over my scalp
All fuming-acid corrosive?

Were you in under the folds
Of the welcoming, white-striped comforter
As we turned in after a perfectly pleasant day?
Waiting, still, in the dark
As I pulled the blankets up taught?
And just below my chin
As the cold sheets around me warmed
To stop the just-into-bed shivers?

Did you crawl up then as I dozed
And twist around my throat
To tighten slowly until I awoke in your grip?

Where ever you were hiding,
You got the drop on me.
You turned the tiny dim lights
That peek into the room at night
Into piercing lasers.

You amplified the tiniest odours
Into dizzying, eye-watering stenches.

You traded the rising-sun's rays
As they finally pierced the curtains
After my hours of sleepless discomfort
For a blasts of neutron-bomb radiation.

Worst of all
You stole the cool, soothing side of the pillow
Every time I managed to find it
Giving me instead a sickly, warm bundle of gorse.

Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding?

It's National Poetry Month you say?
Well, "National" in that usual way.

Between the borders that mark that land
That badge is applied only there and
Just upon these calendar days
Upon the poem, they'll heap their praise.

And after the month is put to the sword  
The words and phrases will all be ignored
Never again will such work we discuss
Until they mark another month thus.

Come,
Walk with me.

One, bee, drei, orange, Wednesday,
Counting in riddles;
A hug, a meal, a song, a breath,
Loving in rhymes;
School, work, isolation, frenzy,
Living in chaos;
A lyric, a whisper, a dance, an eyelash,
Waking in dreams.

an axe lifted high overhead
swing it down
with a power borne of imprisonment
split the icy sarcophagus underfoot
the crack opens up
and the shards falls away
spring winds, flowers and the promise of summer

go join the crowds in the street
push with the rhythm of their steps
help them make this heavy globe spin
stand later on the prow of the concrete median
and feel what you've done
it moves heavy steady and firm
under the spinning wheels
of the stationary cars

reach up high and grab a branch
pull with your arms
and scramble against the bark with your feet
let it cradle you in its embrace
and dream you've always lived there

smile with the approaching punchline
and laugh at the end
do that for him
he needs a lift today

run your fingers through the weather
and walk with the wind pushing
in the small of your back
press your feet
upon the spine of the world

Maybe it's the changing weather
That draws me to you
And makes us hold each other close.

Maybe it's the length of the day
Making us reflect on the passage of time
And the moments we've spent together.

Maybe the numbers on the calendar
Bring us moments of nostalgia
And spark enthusiastic plans for the future.

What ever it is,
It fills us and illuminates the air.
It comes in on fingertips and shared stories,
And goes out on eyes and arms and gestures.

But it only happens this time of year
It lasts just a brief, fleeting twelve months
Then it happens all over again.

Tell me all those things
You've told me before
I'll listen attentively
And raise eyebrows in anticipation
As you get to the crux of each tale.

Tell me again the stories
Of people met and re-met
Of chance surprises and things said
Of sights seen and paths discovered
Of how good home felt at the end of the trail.

Just to sit across from you
At a chrome-plated and Formica-surfaced table
With a kettle going
And no breaks for me to squeeze in a word.
But oh, to see you again.

smooth grey-black stones
you held in your hands
i threw them one-by-one
into the dark oil-like water of the lake
they made intertwining radiating circles
that spread out slowly
to finally lap gently
at the crystalline sand
at the water's edge
and tickled you
between your perfect toes

Give it all away
Like barnacles that clung to you
As you plied the oceans
Sails full of October wind
Like the hunger, that pulled you forward.

Let it slip away
Like a heavy, sated python
That rolls languidly off a low-slung branch
Into the blackest river water.
While your white-knuckled grip held you transfixed

Set them all free
Like silk-spun cocoons gathered days before
To erupt into a mass of unsure-wings
And flutter up into streaming sunlight;
Your reaching arms grow tired from the climb

Lay naked then upon the glade.
The mosquitos and gnats will not buzz you.
The leeches will not try for your blood.
It will be as if you are not.
As your burdens were what defined your existence.

Cold, black and oil-like,
The monster flows quick and all-consuming
Between steep jaw-like banks,
In the dying light
Of the shortest days.

Edges were bordered soon
With slowly-gathered cut-crystal shapes
Like collected puzzle pieces
Sharp as razors, and finely decorated,
Like discarded dragonfly wings.

Soon myriad tiny folded-tissue flowers
Floated down in the stillest, icy air
And all signs of the malevolent depths and currents
Were hidden under a cotton duvet.

With the rising winds now
Great granular dunes
Tumble and sift across that place.
And the whistles and howls drown out
The tiny gurgling calls,
That are all the monster can muster
From beneath its white sarcophagus.

We have obscured points-of-view
From where we cling so earnest,
To this one rock among the few
That orbits ‘round that furnace.

But when we’re on the other side
Of our boulder, deep in night,
The stars blaze in the sky so wide
Such a majestic, unreal sight.

Lay down sometime, upon the snow,
In a treeless, open place.
As the spinning Earth below
Tries to throw you into space.

Do it now, you’re in your prime.
Take up your position!
If you let go at the perfect time
You’ll fly out on your mission.

Choose a spot that’s cold and clear
Where just last night it snowed.
Then punch out through the stratosphere
And let your head explode.

A little oasis occupied in a cafe
that approaches capacity.
Three opposite, two adjacent,
a couple at the windows to the right.
Six or seven more around the corner, out of view

Early twenties guy, has a slightly too-small zippered sweater,
with head down and a two-handed hold on his phone
the left relinquishes its grip for a minute to wipe across his face.

Late fifties man in a blue,zipped, baggy, sweat shirt
and early-nineties hair gone grey.
A phone too, but of a more palm-and-fingertip interaction
with pursed lips and an occasional surveying of the room.

A quiet girl at my right leaves and four chatty middle-aged yoga ladies
squeeze onto the table for two.
They obliterate my concentration
and I resort to a cocoon of headphone noise.
Their too-strong perfume forms a veritable blue cloud
and leaks into the taste of my tea.

Like a back-lot set between movies
Or a radio-active Soviet village, abandoned and vacant
The cold January sun illuminates
A first-day-of-the-year neighbourhood
Unmarked by human presence.

Snow skiffs are the only activity
And frosted, black-green lawns
Retaining their last tending in an icy stasis
Everything remains empty and frozen
As the clock ticks relentlessly
Into another year.

Steps taken together over scarred, torn soil
And songs sung quietly together,
In an explosion-punctured night
With mouths just a breath's distance apart.
Smokey winds drifted over the pockmarked land,
The glow would never really let the night settle in,
When the sun left again with the refugees.

And these threads we carried for decades
Until they were small traces in a modern blanket
Woven with absurd cords of boredom and apathy.
Yet we still feel the anticipation
When we hold the other's hand
Of the sudden, desperate clench
Of a too-close escape.

Catch the one you beckoned
To fall down to you
Out of the deep black sky.
It burns unless you play it
Quickly from hand to hand.
As beautiful and sparkling,
As glowing and exotic.
You cannot too soon
Find a ladder tall enough
To place the jewel back
From whence it came.

The soaking ink
The doppler-shifted music
The refracting light

The gravity pulls
The magnetic-norths repel
The sticky vacuum ether

A falling stone
A drifting feather
A stationary wind

A silent name
A population disinterested
A common, universal secret

The sharp middle
The undulating plane
The slowly rising soil

Sensation and intuition
Without and within
Together in massive isolation.

A burden looms
A curse against the destination
So seemingly attainable
When setting out upon the road
And making first steps
In untrodden snow.

Around each corner
Another barrier rises above the path.
Yet another stalwart mountain.
Cannot one day be easy on the journey?
Each makes the distant goal seem more futile.

Yet the base of the hill gives way
To the persistence of small steps
As surely as the summit does.
The tough slopes seem insurmountable
But have no reply
To the inching progress
Of one foot
Placed
In front
Of the other.

And as rest comes at last upon the crest,
And yet a thousand more peaks still rise in the distance,
This one achieved goes into your pocket.
Credentials against which
All the rest will fall.

A slow-rising migraine seeps into my head
As toxic floodwaters that fill the rooms of my home,
Seeping into my skull with powerful fingers
Like heat-seeking needles to pierce the calm quiet
Of a relaxed and peaceful reverie.

Sleep comes to me now
Like a lover, faultless yet wronged,
ever forgiving, crawling silently into my bed;
Like a heavy monsoon-soaked night
Descending on a decrepit, third-world city.

Wrapped in a blanket against the cold night
Like a paper-wasps' nest
in a black-and-white birch tree
dusted with snow;
Like the wick of a hundred-times-dipped beeswax candle,
awaiting the flame.

A heart beats monotonously,
Like a leather-encased clockwork, a spring-wound toy
It ticks away the hours until the moment
When, with a silence like a stone, it stops.

The close of the week,
Like an old familiar house you have vacated
And stuffed with memories still as fresh
As burnt Monday-morning toast
That still blues the air.

The night,
Like a panting black dog
Falling exhausted upon the day
Like his favorite old blanket.

We walked home
In the late autumn darkness.
The cold north wind
That tore at our faces on the way out
Now pushed at our backs.

Just a quick pint at the local.
Gloved fingers intertwined now
As we walk those few blocks home.
A few elusive stars swimming in the pitch.

Silver slivers of low clouds hang
Canopies over our houses
Reflecting city lights.
We shiver but still wait a few moments
To look at the night
Before we enter the warm bear-hug
Of our glowing home.

The door needs to be kicked in.
No gentle open and whispered hello
It needs become of splinters and dust.
The glue of its joinery to shatter and crumble.
The latch which would open smoothly
With the simple request of a raised hand
Needs to be driven shattering through wood
Sending formal wooden trim embellishments flying.
The myriad of small retaining nails will be extracted
Reversing a collective hold they held resolutely,
Pinned by hammer blows so long ago.

That door needs to come down.
To lower hinge will give way completely,
Leaving some screws still biting desperately
Into a fragment of the wooden frame.
The hinge at eye level will twist apart from our blow
One side remaining stuck in place on the frame
The going with the door as it disintegrates.
The pin that held it together in smooth harmony
Soon will dangle pointless on half a binding hinge,
Still now – the mechanism prised-apart.

The door shall be destroyed.
Our collective force irresistible – it will fragment.
Once trees were felled and sawed into planks,
Smoothed and shaped and joined in the build.
Now we need to render it all into firewood.
And where once stood a blank, heavy door
There will be light and air flowing through.
And the only hint of the barrier that was before,
Will be a final clear, metallic note
From the pin that finally falls
Upon the smooth stone floor.
A single note will ring out
And lead into a song of freedom.

Inky darkness fills the late afternoons
And doesn't retreat until well into the mornings
November rises, standing slowly taller
And carries arm-loads of damp, chill days
Into December’s crystalline, grasping reach.