I hit my peak so long ago
I was six, on top of the world
On top of the jungle gym,
Not that it was different.
But since then,
rolling downhill

I see myself everywhere
and the world I perceive revolves around me
not because I'm narcissist
but because my existence is my entire world
I'm everything I have

There was a girl,
She’s gone now,
Who lived and breathed
Imagination and life,
(Aren’t they the same thing?).

She saw the house down the street
And thought it a monster
Never that it was replete
With the emptiness  
An innocent bungalow will foster.

Air was to her
As glass water that sings
About its giggling spring
And she would awaken
At its dance upon her skin
As she breathed it all in.

The air is now
As water, grey like mercury,
That dampens what the eye can see
And it is chagrin
That is awoken
At a world so forsaken.

Nietzsche was mistaken
When he proclaimed
Our God as dead.
It’s the vision and
Stories for which we used to aim
That expires instead.

i like to imagine myself trekking across
a great desert, or tundra, or wasteland,
and it’s dark but the sky is glowing
with stars and the sun on the horizon
and everything is that beautiful natural violet.
there is nothing for miles and miles and miles
and in every direction is the same thing.
i walk over hills and through ditches
but in the hugeness of the landscape
they are nothing, and it’s still wide and flat.
i wonder and i dance and i shout at the sky
and i flail my arms around and trip over
and i yell and grin and shake to the stars
and to the space beyond them, that infinity.
i tip my head upwards and smile to
infinite amounts of infinite things up there.
i am confused and i am lost and i am scared
and in all of that i’ve found the most joy
that is even possible to be felt.
i scream at the infinity in a friendly way
as if i’ve figured out its secrets,
as if we’re on the same page.
i thank it and i laugh at it and i scold it
for everything that i feel and know and am
because one of the infinite things up there
must have given it to me,
whether it knows it or not,
and i feel safe and tiny and fleeting
and i am so happy to be the
tiny second of useless time and phenomena
that i am.

You pose and pout,
Seduction by superficial sauciness.
You tell me of your day
With that simpering voice,
Raising each last word
Long and loud.

You show me your flash cars,
Your sumptuous wardrobe
And who knows what else?

You and your kin call yourselves “Influencers” –
A great word,
But all you do is make people:
People who have grafted long and hard
For a little spare cash,
Go buy things they
Do not really need.

Right Said Fred was Right:
The global catwalk
Is a sham.

I too would love to be an “Influencer”,
Such a fine word,
But I would be one to encourage folk
To Love others,
Stop all this Conflict
Between polar opposites and extremes,
Fight only for the Common Good,
And make the world a better place
For All.

Paul Butters

© PB 15\1\2021.

women don't know how to love
and neither do men
it's a mean world
it's a cold one
full of children
who've got the bends,
coming up too fast