My room,
Both a death camp and a safe zone,
Rather wither away,
Than face execution.

Open door,
Deep breath,
Failure.

Hand over my feelings,
back to bed,
laying there,
friends were a conspiracy.

Leaving this house a teenage floor of lava,
To the armory,
Wield headphones and an over grown coat.

Open door,
Deep breath,
Stand.

The sun hurt as if i just left a space ship,
Fear of both know and unknown,
On this planet I was the alien.

Open gate,
Deep breath,
Walk.

Pavements conveyor belts,
Pushing out ghouls of society,
Cubicle bound,
Grey walls.

Yet still asked why so scared,
Of what I wish was just in my head,
This earth,
The land of dead.

Some people like fall, but not me.
It's full of death and decay, the gorgeous pieces of fire drift
from their skeletal homes and burn out into
sodden mushy brown paper.
Hard smooth and brown pebbles, spiky holey bombs, and twirly helicopter blades fall from the same skeletons and hide
beneath the paper, waiting for an innocent victim,
lying in the perfect position to slip someone up so that
they lose their bags and packages as they themselves go
slip slide crashing into the ground.
The victims are sure to rise up again, but with some bruises and bits of soggy brown, stuck all over their clothes
In fall, all the blooms of color decease, all fruit and vegetable and good green things die and leaves the world sodden mushy and brown.

Some people say they like winter, but not me.
It's a cold cruel and heartless season, robbing any last trace of life
from all helpless and left-behind creatures.
The vegetation becomes glazed over with melting glass and is the
one spot of beauty, as the only green left resides on prickly evergreens, housebound plants, and the occasional tacky
coat.
In winter, there is no way to leave your personal fortress without mountains of clothes, and so every person becomes a
chapped lipped, red cheeked, stiff fingered puffball.
Every time you jump into a mound of the white fluff that accompanies the dread season, some is bound to creep into your shirt and boots, freezing whatever it touches, and then ever so so slowly flowing along your skin, one of Gaia's little tortures.

What does lockdown mean for me?
I'm housebound anyway.
People think I'm always free,
I'm now that 'at home' mom everyday.

This is also what they thought,
When I told them I'm a singer.
'If you don't own charttoppers,
You're just a failure.' is what lingered.

I found it shameful and difficult,
Broke down several times,
I couldn't find my own identity,
Searching for myself felt like a crime.

41 weeks and 2 days I carried her,
My little angel, the apple of my eye,
I'm now learning a basic fact -
- A lifetime flies faster than light.

So fast, I don't know what day it is,
I'm living each day by the hour.
Before I know it, it's bedtime again..
What exactly is within my power?

When the birds stretch their wings,
At the crack of a quiet dawn.
The time I was raised to wake and listen,
To the Tanpura, the sound of Om.

This is my one true power,
Whether they believe it or not.
A lockdown may not define it,
I'm a musician, a mom, not a robot.

These clear blue skies at spring,
Came again after a barren season.
I'm housebound and learning again,
Another chance to live it right is my reason.

only today i felt this strange fear from boredom, i don't expect housewives to feel it, although i'm certain they do, brain-draining watching some Jurassic adaptation where man's imagination really did a runner - not into the fantastical but into the absurd - like in science fiction, did a runner, completely off the mark given chemists making shampoos and toothpastes and fertilisers... ethically-free science fiction - but this housebound fear from boredom, greater than a fear of death it seized me and rattled me, i had to go out to buy a few beers; just like it happens to really rich people, they make their homes into micro-units of what's out there, in society, a swimming pool when there's a communal one elsewhere, a massive library of unread books, when there are plenty of those elsewhere, home cinema, snooker table... it's the entire spectrum of social pastimes condensed into a single household... anyway, i got hot and bothered, i'm starting to think it was not a fear of boredom, but what to do with the piri-piri chicken i was marinating: tomato puree, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, half a large lemon squeezed, 1sp sugar, 1tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cajun pepper, 14g of parsley, mint, oil, 2 chillies, 2 tsp of garlic puree, salt to taste - whisked in a food processor; ~1kg of chicken - because i thought whether i should shove the chicken marinate in an oven bag and cook it for a while, or whether to take the chicken out from the marinate and place it on a baking tray... ****!

poems and book reviews these days, nothing more,
get someone else to do the legwork -
a thoroughly modern malaise -
social anthropology - titled *tribe -
the pros and cons of modern life and our
search for tribal mythology -
the 8x more chance of depression and
other mental deviations in wealthier
societies than poorer ones -
once it was called adventure, now
it's called tourism - after a while you sort
of get bored of the naked ego
and the clothing range your thought
provides you - unless you keep thinking
out the same thing, over and over again,
dressed like Armani, all black, nothing else -
odd, isn't it? they're playing the cat game,
cat wakes up, same ****, different cover,
well, the same cover - same fur - can't
change - the paradox or parody of
the fashion industry, i.e. that the designers
wear the same thing over and over again
and insist people require a spring collection,
the latest autumn trend.... parody.
so back to this piri-piri chicken      n'ah, not really,
i was thinking about what we already did,
this anti-tribalism, to have given ourselves
the opportunity to experience the least
amount of pain, the anaesthetic, sleep inducing
on the butcher's table more or less -
but we also created another anaesthetic,
this anaesthetic is not so subtle - it concerns beauty -
ever see it? ever walk into Tate Modern and
think about Raphael or Michelangelo?
you could tell me i'm overly nostalgic -
but what i see in plain sight is an anaesthetic in place,
against beauty, esp. in architecture -
who'd think of building a new Coliseum or
a St. Paul's - the Tate Modern (as you might
or might not know) is inside a power station,
big massive chimney - would have worked
better in the Battersea (Pink Floyd's Animals
album sleeve), but then St. Paul's is right opposite
and what a staggering dichotomy it is -
i'm sure that's what you call an anaesthetic in art,
the sort of art you have to get or not get
because, frankly, admiring a tin-can of tomato soup
even by Warhol's standards isn't exactly appetising -
i know, conveyor belt necessity and all, once
artists painted on commission for some duke or
duchess, or king to be adorning lavish palaces,
but as according to Walter Benjamin - the work
of art in the age of mechanical reproduction -
some could once claim the original to be worth
a stupendous amount of dosh, but with the above
mentioned essay, the original is worth diddly-squat,
because there is no actual original these days,
because artists don't necessarily have to invest
in raw materials - and the copying process is 100%
perfect, what with photocopying and all...
but **** me over once more, how am i going
to cook this piri-piri chicken?
the few beers took the problem off my hands,
i ended up marinating the chicken in a bag
but then shoved it into a baking tray
an covered with aluminium foil, forty odd
minutes and the chicken was tender - ~5 minutes
without the aluminium foil covering while
the oven was switched off and the temperature
was descending - the carbs? couscous -
alt. North African semolina - and extra cucumber
in tzatziki - a few hours later and i'm a little
buddha not thinking an ounce or a continent's worth
of suggestion... one of those rare albums
salmonella dub's  inside the dub plates,
i'm a real provincial with this album,
tumble **** here, tumble **** there,
never settling for a ****-garden -
i told you i'm just borrowing the language, in fact,
given my alcoholic and status as vermin among
the bulldog rigid British (Londoners can have
their little gay pride parade, whatever, they
better give me up for surgery to a veterinarian than
a human doctor, after all, i'm all ******* gerbil from
now on in, it doesn't take enough pacifists to turn
my attitude into a Neo-**** and bulldozer the Union
Jack into a shallow grave, i don't expect the Caribbeans
and the Pakistanis to usher words of: it's how it is,
a rite of passage, **** your cumin and your ****,
battle of Britain, who among the R.A.F. flew and spat fire?
us) i'm more Apache in a bigger zoo than the one in
Reagents Park, i'm in a conservation zoone -
i'm Aboriginal - shaman of the fire water -
i'll be as ******* ridiculous as i want - go chant
you little kirtan get together mantras going,
i'm sure you'll *****-fight-those-pigeons dead without
a single coo being ushered in - and your little yoga stints
asking questions about the flexibility of the skeleton
not pulverised by scientific eyes for a schematic and
a schooling rubric to domino up the cranium with mandible,
ulna and radius etc. -
but at least i know what sort of country i live in,
and what country is wandering into political apology that's
too late, in ratio 27:1, soon to be Turkey + the Yugoslavian
gape, Albanian and Macedonia by 2020 -
>30:1 - great Welsh ratio that is, oh ****, wait, Scotland too?
i never thought about it coming - there's my 2 cents
on the topic, and that England is becoming more American
by the day? that's good? really?! i thought the
aim of England was to inspire America rather than
vice versa... what a ****-storm these few days ended
up being; ol' McDonald didn't have a farm, but
had the slogan - *i'm lovin' it!

She finds that even backyard leaves contain
a blazing history inside their veins.
She reads the legends etched in crinkled skin,
her ardent, housebound blood boiling within.

At dusk, she likes to listen to the creek–
its reverent, animated tales of meek
young girls who grew into grand bronze statues–
and long for metal legs that’d let her choose

to dare, and burn, instead of fear, and waste.
But still, at night, her body likes to chase
the hours stargazing at ceilings. And
the myth-less, coarse white stucco slowly sands

away each spot of sprouting luster on
her atrophying frame. With nerve all gone
and adult blood inert as viscous tar,
she cannot even dream of ceiling stars.

imagination: the crucible of inanimate things getting the modern physics makeover of dynamism in quanta of crosswords and dalmatian; imagination: **** static without the fizz of carbon edging to oxygen in the nightclub; imagination, when you assume unmovable things can be moved not disgruntled by not seeing the image of such feats formalised for applause and a nobel on the clean sheen buttering the scalp; oh yeah, what else? ah! me shampoo steve on the maiden to scrap lanky, me talk aboriginal, continent to continent, me talk each cult dialect of tribe without chief, me smoke tobacco with glee, but back home, i'm like the aboriginal: i say socrates is pop, they say kerry katona is popper, i might as well be among the **** naked cannibal lepers eating themselves to the salt shake of maracas - mmm, extra flaky; chisel those fried pouts into ducky of chalky lipstick: originating without mirror but a stick; but to be honest? the celebrity culture was a way to cut off the famous from 2000+ years ago; well, that was the original idea.*

i wanted to correlate the fascination from astrology
into phonetics, i chose the oak tree split to be the y,
i chose the sun to be o
and the moon to be c,
but i lost the constellatory plot from there;
so a beer and cigarette on a sunny day:
england owns september if you want me to compare
it to a zodiac; england owns september.
then i dipped into a canto dry lipped,
ushering people in:
man will be more heartbroken losing
his dog to a stranger than a woman,
with animals there's no free will involved you see,
pat on the head to the count of two
and i was leeched to 5am walkies,
but then i dropped the finished can, stumped the cigarette but
and opened the book, hiroshima sunrise
of bleach white pages in the sunlight,
shadow those twenty-six digits in for the eyes to see.
i want literature, i don't want oration,
not the kind of politics of arson with pre-pepper sneezes
of applause on the cue, life, the automation of queues,
i want spontaneity and the outer reaches to shake
a banana into a pistol in a magic trick,
with the bunny turning into a rabbit-hare mongrel,
or a ******* left *** wiggle for the photoshop, you choose.
so i said: but i want literature, i want to read
books so complex that i can't incorporate them into
my cognitive narrative, and i can't even speak about them,
i want books like that, books that will
not allow me to speak about them, or join a book club,
or become a critic for a newspaper when the **** is hot,
i want... literature... pure and simple...
i don't want tea break talk folding a ******* into jam and cheese
benevolently housebound to smear cat **** on walls and simply
call it diluted beige.

Thinking back to our beginning

Of things we used to do

Lord, I know my mind's still willing

I wish my body still was too

The years have passed by quickly

I blinked and they were gone

In time we both got sickly

But, our memories linger on.

We used to go out walking

To the park and in the woods

Just spending time together

And we talked and times were good

Now it's just a memory

Now it hurts to climb the stairs

We may no longer go out walking

But the memory lingers there

It's not that we were active

But our world was larger then

Now, we're confined to samll spaces

Our world was larger to us then

Once the snow comes we are housebound

We're together, not alone

We talk of when times were better

And we talk how we have grown

Disabled doesn't live here

We won't say words of that kind

Even though our body's dying

We both still have our minds

Distractions don't come easy

There's nothing for us to see

We still revel in each other

For we have no family

We'll be partners forever

We won't be so long apart

For when one dies the other follows

Soon, from such a broken heart

In sixty years that we've been married

We've had friends, but most are gone

They never knew that our small secret

Was we let our memories lead us on

They say the past is gone forever

The future is the place to be

But for us our futures leaving

And the past is where I'll be

I've more years now behind me

That I have got left to live

But as long as we're together

My love to you I'll always give

Remember when we'd go out walking

Just us two, those times were fine

I'd wish that in our future

We could do it one more time.
..

i feel the young have been cheated in terms of history, there's no personality in it, there's no humanity behind it, there's no grandfather behind it, they have all been told they're essential, essentially human, they write it like they were in eden, there's no past, they're passive deniers but active censors... at least i can claim my great grandfather owned a wehrmacht dagger.*

as long as he’s housebound he’s safe,
as long as he's censored
he's an export;
the paternal great grandfather was
in the wehrmacht and
the maternal grandfather
was a communist party member;
i guess the weekend starts with
a friday in a club, and ends in
b & q on a sunday combo of blinds
and toilet paper... but i guess
the highlights are gone by then...
don't worry... i'll comfort myself.

Last year, despite his long gone testicles,
& 91 dog yrs of innocence,
Old Jack got dragged around the whole back yard
By his bone, by a coybitch he lives with.
He's a lucky dog, but he's 98
Now and down in his hips. He cries at night,
Housebound by his infirmities and I
Talk to him, touch his head and give him pills.

I remember my grandmother's voice--
You old dog you; I love you like jackfrost;
Mothers are like that, yes they are. She lived
To 95, forgetting for the last
Four who she was and where she was and why.
Should you or I be 1/2 so fortunate.

An old dog doesn't know he's dying, just knows
It's harder to live. I blow smoke in his ear
And we watch ****** stories, real and imagined.
Forensic files, Hitchcock. He struggles to stand.
I'm slow at doing what I have to do.
This morning, like most, weather permitting,
We're 2 blocks down the street from
Where we live. He struggles to ****--
Cancer blocks his peristalsis, makes it difficult
To squat. And I  stand ready with my Kleenex,
In case he gets it out on neighbor's or
The sheriff's lawn. Go ahead old friend, let it
Go. I'm right behind you.

Another night has breezed me by
Too much sleep has gone in haste
Somnolence is what makes me drink coffee sometimes
Oh oh oh,
Instead, take me where the monsters once lurked
In between the crevices of my old crypt that remains inert
I want to take a peek of the catacombs
Where I sometimes visit in my sleep

Oh ** **,
Where's that sense of humor I once had?
Couldn't speak now
With the tongue I once had
I'm enshrouded in nostalgia
With silly monsters caught in between
Stuck in my daydreams
I can't help but imagine the past

Oh oh oh,
That was my wonderful life
Little kids on the pave
Laughing and falling on their knees
And flippant little fingers making a scene
If I could only spring back
To the time when my essence was clean
Back to the home where I pestered the words
"Please, please, please"
To the point of my content, when I could no longer protest
When I finally drowned asleep in the summer breeze

Cheers to my childhood days
And to the housebound trance of old school lullabies
Where my loving family of special hearts
Defended the tears I cried
Oh, oh, oh
Provoked by silly monsters I waved goodbye
Never did I think
I would miss so very much
Those glorious days of when my silly monsters
Brought mischief and thrived

She wrote poems about sunflowers
and about the colors of each of the different flavors in her afternoon tea.

She wrote about the foot-worn path in the concrete floor of the history museum;
About a stranger’s dog who licked her hand at the park.

And to her future child,
And to the boundlessness of love she knew but could not fathom that existed in a forever-expanding space inside her,
And about that brave and resilient seed shared by all of science and art,
the interconnectedness of all things.

In radical joyful tones,
she documented the goodnesses of her Ordinary on scraps of paper and deposited them into a small chest,
her Memory Bank.

The people pointed at the lonely beergazer
The outraged wunderkind
The housebound widower
Each lost in the past or in the future.
Ah, misery.
The father of poetry.
They would shake their heads,
A shame, they would say.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town or maybe the world,
the mother of poetry, undeterred,
sat in her garden
singing to the souls of the vegetables.