#middleage
Middle age is a drawer of bottles,
labels rubbed blank,
small tablets stamped
with numbers I can’t read,
others chalk-white,
anonymous as bones.
That August night I woke,
a moth in the moonlight,
wings two halves of a Viking ship.
They say if it maps all four corners
you’re finished.
My head bricked with mucus,
her throat raw-
our marriage a duet
two instruments coughing through the score.
I whispered- moth,
as her eyes opened, dim glow like sunken lanterns.
It weighed two thousand pounds,
wings lifting her hair
like a bride of the dead.
Two optimism pills
waited on my table.
I chewed them dry,
cementing my tongue,
the insect’s brain ticking in my skull
like a clock in a gothic castle.
Then water rose inside us-
first a seep, then a tide,
spilling warm rivers across the floorboards.
The dark room brightened green,
cypress arms cracked plaster,
reeds whispered spells older than fever.
Fireflies stitched lanterns along the walls,
crocodiles slid through like priests of the river.
We held hands as the bed turned pirogue,
drifting through brackwater green.
Above us the moth circled-
no longer omen but guide,
its wings stirring moonlight into spell.
Papa Legba opened the crossing,
Maman Brigitte lit the reeds with flame.
We: two elders slipping from sickness into swamp,
breath turned to whirlpools,
our oaths ferried
on the moth’s traité tide.
Sep 1, 2025
Sep 1, 2025 at 3:03 PM UTC
He was grateful for the earlier impetus to shave
and the rare spur to trim his wayward nostril hairs.
He was pleased that this was a shower day
and that he had thought to try that citrus gel after all.
He was relieved it hadn’t been a typical Friday night,
topped off with a large fish supper after work.
He thanked the saint of 40-plus, single men
for these small mercies, as he recalled her kiss
- a peck really - on his left check, just in front of his ear
as they hugged their goodbye, just outside the station.
It had been just after she gave him her number
and promised a proper catch up soon and sealed
that promise in the squeeze of his hand as they parted.
And later, at the 1st anniversary of that chance meeting,
they laughed their recollection and she confessed
she had been swayed by the citrus.
Sep 4, 2023
Sep 4, 2023 at 2:06 PM UTC
Marjorie mulls the passing man and fly
The marriage window has gone by
Her hair lies dank n' grey in sobern grief
Her clothes befit a teenage thief
Rejection is a common theme
Daily survival is the daily dream
She plays with beads and hears the chime
The grandfather clock, true keeper of time
She smiles when asked to play the part
Of successful daughter, mother and heart
But reality bites when she is inept
Losing in life she always accepts
Feb 24, 2021
Feb 24, 2021 at 6:11 AM UTC
Sun sets behind, same as always
stretching my still unshapen shadow forward
My foot on the pedal presses,
maybe not as hard as before,
but always
The comic line perspective
forced to fit the frame, constricts
but at the same time comforts
Synapses that once crackled, fizzle
and with a little sadness,
still smile
Feb 19, 2021
Feb 19, 2021 at 9:13 AM UTC
Punters only buy into words
if they believe there’s worth.
I’ve been begging for buyers
before premature birthdays.
Let earth spin unaware –
never questioned its axis.
Hid from the anxious parties,
continued chewing table cloths,
then choked on the spike of a train stub.
Not much value in a decade thrice lived –
standing on the coast in yesterday’s underwear,
a teenage busker sits between hip-hop legacy
as new marble faces arrive in constant rotation.
I’m waiting for my estranged brother dance,
who ran out on me despite his free diary entries.
Desperate for reunion. Bitter for the jives lost.
I’ve stepped further than I ever pictured
but I’ll never walk away from the stalking wolves.
Cubs are warned but continue to ignore all advice.
Lions that scrap with the pack tell me to enjoy the plains.
So I forget the bites and burn this poem in my future face.
Sep 28, 2020
Sep 28, 2020 at 11:53 AM UTC
What stuff is this cotton wool behind my eyes?
A knit of foggy fibers holding fast my next thought.
Odd when my mind so flies;
at the age of fifty three I ought
to relish ripe wisdom & cognition,
yet here I am, forgetting where to turn
just to reach the kitchen.
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 20, 2019 at 9:14 PM UTC
Some mornings
I look at my face
and feel a pang of loss.
Like a thing once
fresh and succulent,
forgotten then found
grayed and desiccated
and stuck to the back
of the fridge.
I exaggerate.
Yet I am too old to be salad.
May 10, 2019
May 10, 2019 at 1:22 PM UTC