Drenched in feeling
Eyes drink the landscape

I could swear that each colour was
emotion-tinted
sorrow-toned
anguish-textured

How many stretched hours of living
made each heavy brush-scar?

What volume of rinsing tears
for each change of shade?

Why did the artist know instinctively that the people
were so small
in such a vast, pigment-thick world?

From this distance they feel like children
But I know that they are grown
At least on the outside

Agony
and aesthetics
amalgamate in
assembled alchemy

Are these thoughts
artist-intentioned
landscapist-birthed
painter-engineere­d?

Or are they my thoughts
reflected
by brush strokes?

Designed to elicit, not instruct
To return, not to teach
To cast-back, not to create

This open canvas
in muddy colours

A perfect, terrible mirror
Helping me gently
in my now softened
sadness

Your cruel words are cursory
Mean less than null to me

Don’t need a PhD
Learnt more in nursery

Sweet song of ‘helping me’
No more than sophistry

Pick out the forgery
Lies with no artistry

Flowing in, eyeless grin
Sugary medicine

Gaslighting, infighting
Snarl under strobe-lighting

Saccharine blathering
Indolent flattering

Backhanded compliments
Heard without inner sense

I reject totally
Self-slighting sorcery

Callous affrontery
Bankrupting bursary

I have observed more
Preserved more

Have learned more
Deserve more

Have value
Don't argue

Can trust me
I must be

Enough being
just, me

So hear me,
my dear me,
coz now we agree

I am worthy

I step inside. The weight of past encounters shrinks the corridor. I brain-search for a safety behaviour to assuage the impending sense of doom. As if on a plane (‘count the seats between you, and your nearest exit’), I count the doorways between the entrance and my office as I walk forward.

Door one. Used all my leave days. Gone four weeks. Feels like much longer. Door two. Window ledges look unfamiliar. Doorhandles are strange. Door three. Was the carpet always this colour? Door four. The tight-wound wool ball in my chest clenches, the stretching yarn groaning like sailboat ropes in a north-westerly. Door five. I say chest, but to be specific, it’s the top of my sternum, bordering the jugular notch. Door six. The squeeze-groans are petulant reminders of why I went on leave. My omniscient manubrium warning call. Door seven. For the love of all that lives on God’s green earth, why are we back here?    

Why indeed. Door seven. Home base.

I sit at the desk and my mind crouches and crawls along the lonely, dark path. Back to the last time I was here. The last time I was hunted. Sludgy mud memories thickly bubble, burst, and liquefy before my eyes. So very thick and so very brown. Each pop a muted wet slap.

Then, another sound. From my computer. Just in front of me. I have an email.

My inner mud-bubble memory show responds. Now it scrolls through a parade of minor monsters. Possible email senders. My space and mind invaded by their correspondence. So very desperate and so very flawed in their attempts at functional adult interaction.

So very tantrum-primed, slander-keen, and gaslight-geared.

Mean-spilling, rage-channelling, drama-divers.
Breakdown one-uppers.
Accountability dodgers.
Monopolising guilt-trippers.

Lesser daemons.
Energy vampires.
Always thirsty.

This is where they hunt me. Door seven. My office. In emails, texts, calls, voicemails, and physical presence. High quality rendered. Dream reproduction ready. Technicolor.

To be fair, I’m top-grade prey. All squishy and caring. Softest-of-soft targets. The quintessential good listener. Ears for days. Psych-trained, chair-arranging, body language monitoring, tone-of-voice sensitive, feelings generator. Generous-portioned, silver-service dining. Tastes like sweet intentions, candied optimism, and bitter disappointment. Fear garnish for colour and crunch.

Now, I sit behind door seven. Waiting. Vibrating emotion...
I can feel them closing in…  

Please send instructions for establishing clear boundaries, guidelines for maintaining a mental distance, and chocolate.

Happy Halloween.

The weekend sprinted past without acknowledgement. More time travel than sleep. Feels like I never left this desk. Did I go outside? Sunlight is a forgotten fancy. Everything buzzes in artificial, mercury-vapour gas-discharge, office white.

Strong coffee, mouth-only smile, and emergency chocolate at-the-ready.

Digital calendar fairy sweeps her wand - plink.
Upcoming meeting onset.
Wince.
Nearly go-time.
Deep breath.
I need help.
Close my eyes and consider my options.

In silent prayer, I call on my battle-allies. My conflict squad for the tiny, inconsequential campaigns that are laid out before me, scheduled neatly in 30-minute increments.

Sarcastic skirmishes with witless weapons. Budgetary disbursement battlegrounds, each heralded by a twinkly bright plink. Officious double agents and grinning traitors. Good sense and basic decency defeated ad nauseam.

Inwardly, I flick through my mental deck of cards. Mythic personality avatars. Figurative and emblematic. Mostly trusted, often helpful allies and collaborators. My squad. Grown over years. Battle-honed when the stakes were substantially higher.

Nine of Swords, Nymph Aegina
Scared and small. Of water and steel
Daughter of rivers
Mistrust, despair
Reduce, retreat, conceal

Queen of Swords, Pallas Athena
Warriors and winter. Shrewd and tough
Strength and judgement
Challenge, compel
Defeat, critique, rebuff

King of Cups, Charles the Great
Gifted and keen. Springtime and fire
Patron of culture
Consider, rethink
Exhort, create, inspire

Five of Wands, keening Achos
Dust and torment. Deep distress
Bringer of weeping
Commend, lament
Regret, bewail, profess

Queen of Wands, Lady of Lorien
Fearless and brave. Of summer and tree  
Wielder of Light
Perform, protect
Assert, direct, decree

I select our Lady, knowing that Aegina and Achos may vie for a cameo.
Channelling my Queen of Wands,
I arrange my face
and await the knock at the door.

Betwixt the cloud and rain
Lies more than empty sky
Life’s clumsy saga built
As bumping, joining drops
Condense around discreet
Impure or dusty nuclei

Between the day and night
Soft rose light smattering
Romantic goodnight kiss
To mix pink more with white
Unseen pollutants dance
In shorter wavelength scattering

From birth to adulthood
When kind compassion blooms
The road of dusty harms
Full humanness in-bud
With suffering and pain
An alchemy of timeworn wounds

Malicious hearts will hurt the empath
As summer hurts the winter shore
Eroding buffers until burnout
Kind retreat, the only cure
--

End-of-summer beach
Seabirds’ shaky screech
Grey gulls too full to cry
Bin chooks too fat to fly
Sorry shoreline
Systems offline
Foot pounded
Rebounded
Flattened…
Shrub ripped
Wing clipped
Sand-******
Grass plucked
Party bruised
Cocktail-cruised
Cans on conches
Fish unconscious
Foam and flotsam
Wave-blind coxon
Soda can crab shacks
Neon pink algae tracks
Whelk shell graveyard
Absent lifeguard
**** platoons
Naked dunes
Cheapened
Weakened
Exposed…
Tidal hangover
Coastal leftover
Erosion potluck
Sitting sea-duck
Strong incoming storm surge
Winter solstice land purge
Quick and shifty beach thieves
Cyclone tempest mouth-breathes
Recalcitrant brackish aggressor
Intransigent briny transgressor
Suspensions of sediments modified
Walling and breakwaters compromised
Over, back, and whitewash makers
Bubble, rubble, boil and breakers
Weathered, not weathering
Tempered, not tempering
More block than gavel
More grave than gravel
All prisoner no guard
Grain short of a shard
Receding sand-line drift
Intensive shoreface-lift
Patient unresponsive
Highly hypertensive
Code cerulean blue…
Plant encouragement
Shoreline nourishment
Sand transplant
Grass implant
Healing hiatus
to homeostasis
Swell subsiding
King Tide presiding
Prince Neap succeeds
Warm court accedes
Managed realignment
Sanctuary assignment
Steadfast protections
Timid reconnections
Gentle, careful, soft,
and slow…
  A new beach visitor
  dips their toe

She awkward steps back kitchen-side
This pan-lapsed food-fond alchemist
To where her latent joys reside
In flavour-labours sanctified
    Through boils, in bakes, on roasting
Her last cooked dinner, holiday
Before her dear one took their leave
Too painful kitchen-time replay
So, pots and mixers stored away
    Lost joy of home-heart toasting

Now humming with slight body quake
Full fear of fast descent in tears
Yet realising the heady ache
Was no impending weep-long lake
    But simple mess frustration
In truth the galley, clean enough
But who put all her tools away?
No soldier knife line, shining tough
No pin for shortcrust, brush for puff
    No decorating station

Crisp tuts for every tool misplaced
With tiny sighing shoulder arch
Utensils that could not be traced
Like grieving that could not be faced
    Rough substitute located
While losing whisk, sieve, spoon, and knife
With larger pieces from her past
In working through small kitchen strife
She found her hiding zest for life
    In crusty pastry braided
    Joy-cooking reinstated

Mental round-about
Self-esteem see-saw
Innocent web search
‘Change core beliefs from childhood’
Google tells me it’s child’s play

---

Welcome to the rest of your life
The best of your life, your best of your life
You are the author of your story
Around the metaphorical turn,
along the symbolic path, up the figurative stairs,
you open your catachrestic mute eyes and deaf heart
You are smarter, stronger, sightlier
Socially appropriate, admissible, acceptable
You have worth, hold worth, make worth

Choose something new to believe in
Start today, heart today
Chart your way, heart your way
Treat your limiting beliefs like thoughts
Write your belief-thoughts down
Be honest - no cheating
You can’t fool your brain, so retool your brain
Today’s lies make tomorrow’s whys
Use your neuroplastic, elastic, synaptic
retroactive, augmentative, cross-cognitive,  
meta-thinking for better thinking

Renew reckoned resilience
Never say ‘no’ to anything again
Bent grass that always bounces back
Elephants, drought, and weeds
Fugacious clouds in your sky
Master of no-limit living

You can cope with anything, everything,
all things, unlimited
(uncurbed, unchecked, unreasonable)
You can do it, all up to you
(Your responsibility, burden, fault)
Coping, thriving, ruling
(Your “no-one-should-have-to-live-like-this” life)

---

Romanticised view
Of self-thought-work road
Not slides and swing sets
But stepping slowly daily
A journey in compassion

Clear, kindly limits
Held for shared welfare
Outside-trap living
Not shiny, crafty life-drain
Growing into wiser eyes