Season's greetings, or the omission of a hand to hold
when it's winter bleak, miserable and cold.

Two weeks away in the sun, or campsite summer-lit mornings
and sand in our sandals from an evening on the shore.

The dew puddles are forming,
its stagnant river sister foaming
with cream lips at the edge of the white water;
she's whispering well-thought-through white noise
because she knows of the future to come,
the upriver source told her that you've
two seasons left to sort yourself out.

Because when I see it
I wanna view it all in 720p;
a 360 window to the world around me.

No grit, grain, or scratch-sand photographs,
no bullet-pointed drafts of what there is around,
but instead something clear cut and defined,
like the cut throat lines of the rail track heading north,
the tarmac black railings decorating the edge of the port,
telegraph poles and fly fish line linking
your telephone call to my telephone call; and
if you're ringing from a mobile there are still
lines connecting the call, it's just you can't see them
as they're kept within a box somewhere above us
waiting to be decommissioned, waiting to fall back to Earth.

Spring upon the one that least expects it
because that pounce might start a reaction
not known in this lifetime, let alone in those books,
science papers, and coffee-table-I'll-read-it-later
catalogues. Those outlets, paper thin and tidy,
rely
on
fact.

Without fiction, and it's faux-character diction,
minds wouldn't wander, instead they'd be stuck to
statistics, tables, and those graphs awkwardly labelled.

Without fiction, we'd be thrown out of the poet-halls and reading clubs
with NOTICE OF EVICTION printed notes around our neck,
when all we had done was read what we thought.

Without fiction, there would be a fraction of me and you and us and those
missing, lost to somewhere not known here or mapped correctly, hidden underneath
the dirt, frozen water, the crust and snow.

Without fiction, we'd all be alone. Because that figment narrative
can either hide us when hunted or surprise us when confronted
with the one we wish to be with.

the silk won't stop you
it'll only act as a soft-to-touch glaze for a scar yet to form
and by all means fall over into pretty positions
but don't blame the alcohol.
That breezer-pint-shot-and-gill in your limp right hand
is a mask: a tied at the back ribbon to cover up your desired task of falling into the arms
of him,
or him,
or him,
or him,
or him over there.

just because drama school and it's endless auditions
didn't let you in, doesn't mean this Wetherspoons should either:
take a knee
have a breather