When it appears, you can't see it
It speaks, you can't hear it
It touches, you can't feel it
Yet if you look for it, you can find it
If you talk to it, it sometimes listens
If you touch it, it will be felt

It will not give Assurance
It will not give Actuality
Someone help,
Solve this mystery

is it your destiny,
to be read
aloud to many
listened and dissected
in unison
leading our
thoughts as one
every crevice examined -
an anchor to gravity

or should you
just be looked at,
at face value
appreciated
for who you truly are
the sound,
flow and rhyme
of your verse

I believe to fully
appreciate you,
you should be
read in many different ways
to see your genuine value
that is often unique to all

though truthfully,
you really are
just the mutterings
of a poet wandering
room to room
in your mansion

When He came home from work that day
He said “Enough’s enough”.
“Let others built the widgets,
I have done that long enough.”
I’ll live a life of leisure,
crafting poetry and song.
Perhaps I’ll write short stories
or play my guitar all night long.”
Such boundless optimism
didn’t take Fate into account.
Fate, the foe of youth and love,
was lurking there about.
That man thought that He had years of time
to write and think and putter.
Yet Fate was of another mind,
and a malediction muttered.
A tightness in the chest He felt.
A soreness in one arm.
He was sure that it was nothing.
Soon thereafter, He was gone

Late night, early morning drives
The time when I wonder
How close I can get to death
Without dying
Sitting in a vessel
Much safer than my body
My mind can't help but wander
To other places
Intentionally placing my design
In the hands of the outside
I feel empty
Light enough to float
Yet slight enough to fall
Your smell
Still lingers on my sheets
But what will it matter
In an instant
Oncoming traffic
Fraying the string that
The Fates so diligently measure
But there's always that force
That pulls me back again
-- although unwillingly --
Knowing that I do not control
The evasion of death

I didn’t find any pennies on the ground
Or any horseshoe facing up
Or any four leaf clover
And I didn’t get the good half of the wishbone.
So why is it me
Why I am I the lucky one
Why do I get everything I ever ask for

There are people in this world who feel alone
Who have no home
People who hit rock bottom and there’s no way back up
People who know they are at the end
I wish that there was no such thing as less or more

Wish that there was no such thing as luck.

Because the karma says
They get what they deserve
But the thing is
Maybe they didn’t deserve it
Because maybe were wrong and the world
Is just a little unfair
Reality
Isn’t some piano piece of planned perfection
Maybe there are suppose to be holes
And mistakes
and *****-ups
Like there are suppose to be stars and serendipity
And sheer strokes of fortune

And I will run miles and miles
On a clear and cleaned sidewalk
That snakes in circles through suburbs
And they will trudge pavement with
Ruins and cracks and stains
On city streets littered with corruption

For the only fact
I’m not him
And he’s not me
And this is how it’s meant to be
Because we had no choice

Sometimes I believe there’s a book
With every thing in between your first and last breath planned.
So there’s some excuse.
So when unjust appears we say
There was nothing we could have done different.
That everything that happens in supposed.
That we were put on this earth with the timer set.


Because luck is just too unpredictable.

And I wish there was something to blame.

And I wish it was fair.

And I wish that every clover we pick had four leaves
And every wishbone and horseshoe holds some worth
And I wish that every time we are in need
We look down and there’s a penny
That brings us back to the right track

Because if this world was based on superstitious   thought
We would live in fear and in fortune and
Maybe some people would have a shot.

Their eyes met not by chance
But a glitch in the gods plans.
The moment they embraced
the gods anger flared.
Frowned upon by fate
Theirs was a doomed tale.

Opposites they were nay
Like two peas in a pod they say.
But the gods didn't say
Together they should stay.
Frowned upon by fate
Theirs was a doomed tale.

But neither could stay away
From each other for a day.
Yet the gods will didn't sway
And favour their way.
Frowned upon by fate
Theirs was a doomed tale.

And how else would this play?
The gods finally had their way
And each went separately to a bay
Jumped into the waves.
Frowned upon by fate
Theirs was a doomed tale.

Forgotten are our pleas
to temper the dawn
So that even as the night lays silent
there are echoes,
a rhythmic thrum of time
Carried forth are the quiet souls of man
from the ebbing shores born of passing moments
toward the twilight of the flickering flame.
And land ye yet to those moors of shadow,
that evanescence of the living breath,
take heart!
For on its banks grow the roots of the Bodhi
whose branches bore the seeds for the Garden,
and its leaves are as shelter for the Spark.
Thus we bear the gaze of the boatman,
the cloak'd Moirai who guides the clocks,
as it is best to take the lilting petals
upon the tongue
and savor.

If the sun had hands, he’d reach out
to touch the curve of the moon’s spine, tracing
his fingers along each crater as she lit up
for him like a paper lantern
in the sky. His flamed limbs enveloping
her, his Luna. The arch of her back
against the backdrop of night, her fullness
intoxicating. After all this time, still burning for her.

When the sun was given hands, he cursed them
as he watched the moon crumble
into ash in the blaze. His hands were Rome
and he couldn’t stop the collapse, the ruins of her
scattered across his cupped palms. He prayed
to Moirai for revival, but all three gods
were silent. Choking back flames of fury, he tossed
his beloved into the black expanse, each flake still lit
with a passion to rebel the stars
that continue to burn with foolish hope.

From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), British author. "Dedicatory Ode," Verses (1910).

Dear Parents

Thank you for deciding after two years of marriage to have a child, me.
Sorry I wasn't the boy that so many of my family desired, sorry I was late, sorry that you missed the "Rumble in the Jungle", if it's any consolation I know who won.
How I came to be is quite beyond me. Father's family disliked mothers and vice versa. Dad a steelworker, Mam a trainee chef, dad flipped a coin with a mate, my mother was the stake.
Four years later sister came along, then another four years the son, that so many yearned for made an appearance.
I saved my sister's life from my grandparent's dog, lost an ear in that battle, a bit like Van Gogh. Plastic surgery at seven, still hate Cocker Spaniels to this day. I tell everyone I saved her from a rabid Doberman (I know parents, there's no Rabies in Great Britain) what did I get for my trouble? A stuffed white cat and a sister that I made sit in a cow pat.
Thank you parents for sending me to a school that made other kids suspicious of me. A welsh medium school, might as well have been Hogwarts, but they taught me well, (I can swear in five languages) and read and spell.
Dad taught me how to head ****, mam you taught me how to make cake.
My sister taught me how to share, my brother taught me how really not to care. Live each day as if it may be your last, I told my brother that often.
Dad, one of 13 kids, mam one of 3, like me. Dad, I hate your sisters that are alive they remind me of the Moirai, or the three witches from Macbeth, I've tried to like them but I'm terrible at lying, and to be honest they are in their late 70's so they must be close to dying.
Mam, your sister is a lesbian, I think her army days gave that away. Your brother like mine a source of consternation a Navy man that never went to sea????
Now, my grandparents are all dead. Apparently, I have inherited my father's mother's temper. She disappeared for 3 days when she thought she'd killed my grandad!
I'm married now, no rug rats thank God, I'm aunty material, selfish and wicked.
Now, this sounds I know a little quaint and odd, but I know we've had our share of bad luck, but, 42 years wed, still in the family home, surrounded by trees, neighbours we've known for years and people we'd like to poison. But,we've laughed so hard mam you have a hernia, dad you are the male equivalent of a ****, you'll be flirting in the OAP home **** yes, sorry parents as one of your three I get to pick the residential home! And, as they say,that is a good life.
Jo **
P.s I didn't mention our family mental illnesses, early 20th century communism, possible adultery, coveting the neighbours Ford Capri, or pet cemetery in the garden. I'll wait til all are dead then spill about the good secrets.

O, Clotho, what thought have you to weave such jests?
No mortal thought toward you against!
Thy nimble hands, they weave too quick,
a braided thread, nay long nor thick.

Upon Lachesis, yon thread is passed,
who keeps it in her lissome grasp.
A long, long life, ordeals a'plenty,
in thy mind's eye, distill wrath or envy.

Atropos, friend of Hades dear,
Hag of ages, mortal's seer!
A duty trusted unto thy blade
Evanescent and fleeting we must remain.