People who really know me ask, “Do you still write?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, “I’ve never been more inventive or less relevant.”

Above the public pool
a volleyball so cool
stuck for years
in the rafters
Someone’s
breath of life
trapped in
it’s bladder
Evidence of
their lingering
presence, me
wondering
if they ever
pondered the
relevance of
the essence they
left behind?
Singsong thoughts
turn inward …
What about me?
In all the places
I’ve been,
pieces of me,
residual traces
of myself
left behind,
cast away!
Small links, unforgotten,
faithfully preserved
by old friends—
threads of connection
reinforced by timeless bonds—
who keep my words,
moves (dancing!), and
shared memories as
precious cargo,
cherished keepsakes,
A clear reminder that
I exist!  I matter!
I’m something much more
than simply air I breathe
on an unremembered day …
Like that beautiful volleyball
in the rafters

W I L S O N ! ! !




Mark Toney © 2023

I go through the motions.
Each step I realize a bit of what everyone has already figured out billions of times over.
Each big interval in life, each trudge up the steps.
One after the other.
Connecting, dot to dot to dot to dot.
And for what?
To finish a painting with no end.
Maybe it completes itself at the very precipice of death.
But by then what is the point of its existence.
The fleeting beauty of a singular moment at the very end when it all clicks into place.
I've seen a thousand sun sets each a different form and hue.
I'm familiar with fleeting beauty and it doesn't serve a thing.
With all life has to offer why am I left hollow and wanting.
Will this biological nightmare ever end.
The sentience of swirling sticky chemicals is trick played on us all.

Orbital cycles continue in silence
Clues encoded below our surface
Assurances often issued in service

Expectations setting precedent
Placed in systems held with relevance
Are we persuasive to suggested events
Recognisable feelings sense ahead

Onion layers all revealing
Who are the fools inside of you
Step back into receptive thought
To make knowledgeable judgement calls

The light at the end of the tunnel is actually a sense of worth, of value, of relevance... a sense of purpose and place.
The loss of these took me here.
It is not a light that those in the tunnel control... seemingly forever beyond my reach and unable to believe in value, place or worth.
It was never the aim to switch the light off. It was the hand and judgement of others that threw the switch to off. It is why the light and the switch are on the outside of the tunnel and not in the darkness where I am.
If you give no worth...
If you give no value...
If you give no relevance...
If you give no purpose...
Then there can be no place where the light can shine.

Summer is
far as I think,
it flickered when
I blink
dreaming of
nostalgic
no winter, no autumn.

Maybe,you were written
in a next page,
I am the half
of your gut,
in every torn paper
and scratches.
How many times
it took a relevance?
like i'm dreaming
of "if you are mine?"