Words floating in the ether
Tied to a copper wire tether:
An outlet for an outlet.

These online wordshapes composed offline,
Composed in haste and left unedited,
Are but a proxy for real-world emotions.

Shall I 'Tweet' and forget in shame?
Or 'Delete' to burst these floating words?

Empty Church, free of worship.
Solemn words trapped in stone.
Echoes of song long since dissipated.
The tired Eagle spies fewer prey
As age erodes the congregation.

Faith is now displaced by modern life.
No time nor inclination to pray have they:
Hymns have too many lyrics
They offer no repetitive melodies
When was the last poor soul saved?

Yet faith in the Establishment remains,
It's failing flock clinging to the rock,
Demonstrating their faith in His return
Through small hopelessly hopeful acts,
Such as a 'Clergy Parking Only' sign.

Let the unimaginable be imagined
Let the flame burn in memory of the flames
Let the living live for the dead
So the truth of the dead can live on.

The unimaginable that must be imagined
The flame in memory of the flames

Let the living live for the dead
So the truth of the dead can live on.

“Why us? Why no normal boring ****?”
The miraculous odds that you were conceived
Were offset by the misfortune of love unfit.
A birth with much promise but ultimately deceived.
Left to fend for yourselves like moths and butterflies.

You, the unlucky ones, not cared for in your early years.
Your resilience fails to blossom like those lucky ones
Who know little of your chronology of pain
But still ask what you would do if you had a magic wand,
As if that will provide them with solutions to you, the problem.

Trust takes time and is quid pro quo.
You need lessons in trust and attachments
But this is something that most adults don’t know.
Instead, they humour you or treat you with kid gloves,
Meaning that your adolescence is a bitter surprise
When you’re no longer the person they can infantilise.

The Starlings lent the tree a voice,
A murmured anguish: no rejoice.

Like so much Beer Money
Jingling merrily in a pocket
The oafish group jostled,
Clanging and clinking
Calling and cursing
Up the unfamiliar boarded-up street
As, unbeknownst to them,
Their collective bird brains
Homed in on the nearest pub.

Thirty feet of benevolence
Born of serrated, sharpened
Surrendered wickedness

The Angel's redemptive gaze
Fixes like a bayonet
On those who leave an offering

Partly made of blooded knives
Mostly made of amnestied knives:
Behold the alloy Angel saving lives.

Head plunged beneath the smallest lake
Suspended in an acrylic tub,
The warm lathered water,
Womb-like in comfort and familiarity,
Allows the briefest reflection and realisation
On how this very same room
Once offered me tranquility
And on how, earlier today,
In this very same room some thirty years later,
I bathed my own infant son in tranquility.

There were often times,
As I laid in that same bath tub,
When I pondered on my future
Wondered, in intervals of 10,
What life would be,
What skill I did not possess
Might dictate my future?
The joke being, I held no special talent,
No self-belief that any talent would emerge,
And so, my hopes were never high!

Memories aren't what they used to be.
A sunny spin on what happened to me
Hid the truth of pain
From which there was no gain
Other than the mastery of denial
That kept me going for a while
Until delayed maturity helped me realise
That we all work so hard to idealise
Those excitingly messy parts of life
That cut a thousand painless cuts.

As she talked of her past
So too she talked of her future
For fate ricochets endlessly
Through the tunnel of her narrative:
A sorry tale told of a trapped soul
Yearning in vain for an escape
As elusive as it is seductive.

A day off to do nothing
Is got to be worth something.
A morning of sleeping in...
Dreaming, finally relaxing...
...HOLY CRAP IT'S 3PM!

Voyager of 40 years
Escaping the pull of planets
Drawing on my urge for independence
Until, finally,
I leave the heliosphere
And all my thoughts are now mine to share.

Partly awake
Mostly asleep
Tap tap tapping
Upon a glass keyboard
At twelve qwerty three
On a Monday morning
When I should be snoring
Not fighting boredom...
Fighting sleep...
Boring old sleep.

The human form in darkness
Is a frightening vision to behold
Be it a giant of a man
Or the slightest of child
A shadowy silhouette
Always makes my blood run cold.

And so we sat, as you directed:
The window seats you always liked,
(a most desired spot from which to spy)
For you seek out distraction,
And shun focus
(slight of hand to avoid scrutiny).
As I settled in my seat,
I spied the scarlet and gold lining of your jacket;
A rare display of your heart and soul
Told me all I needed to know:
It's neither of us,
But it's both of us.

Selfishly, I reflect on your deaths
As betrayals of my childhood memories.
For, you see, you were like ancient Oaks on my childhood street,
Deep-rooted bastions of my youth,
Withstanding weather, tests and time.

You cradled me in your arms when I fell,
Scented the late summer air with freshly cut grass,
Encouraged and chastised in fair and equal measure:
You were dependable, solid reminders that change is not absolute.

You are the foundations of my fanciful reminscences.

But now, living untethered from my playground,
News of your deaths trickle down to me.
Guardians of my childhood felled in quick shock succession.
Your beating hearts and breathing lungs were always just flesh and blood
Not the ancient timber trustees of my youth,
Simply characters who waved "hello" every day of those forever-summers,
Who never aged in my egocentric mind
Who leave dots of death on the streetmap of my memory,
Whose homes will never be properly re-occupied by useless strangers.

I'm coming to terms with my age:
Memories are the captives of Time,
Nostalgia is but a hazy, rose tinted wallow of the mind,
And no matter how tightly shut my eyes,
I'm never really back on my childhood street,
With the ever-present puddle,
The goalpost van,
My friends and our stupid siblings.
No, those times are lost to time.
But lost is fine,
They're out there, somewhere,
Unanchored and adrift,
And I can live with that...now.

Bwrw fama, arol dy' Sadwrn braf,
Penwythnos dwytha union r'un fath.

The Barista did warn me,
But my home brewed hubris
Really blew up in my face
When my boiling hot porridge
Eruptively boiled all over the place.

Time's tight leash restrains ever more:
Youth runs without looking,
Adulthood takes in the views but not the meanings,
Parenthood siezes your social life and shakes it like a rattle;
A head-spinning temporal trauma
Leaving a void filled by nostalgia
- the middle aged man's worst enemy -
Sunny dazed days of drinking
In heavenly beer gardens,
Laughing without thinking.
But time yanks the leash,
Drags you back into today,
This hour, this minute,
To the ***** diaper
And your soiled hand.

I love you.
I have to,
I want to,
I need to,
I'm your dad,
It's my duty
And my honour.
I thought you felt the same,
So imagine my shame
After running through pouring rain
To save you from the horror,
The anxiety and dread
Of your first day in school,
To find you smiling and enthralled,
At the after-school club
You weren't meant to attend,
And didn't want to be saved from
By your loving dad!
So I say, my darling daughter,
Enjoy it all:
9 to 3,
September to July,
2019 for the rest of your life.
I love you.

Such distant voices,
Like echoes from a recent past,
Calling over rickety field fences
Gently swaying the flourishing corn,
Diminishing as it nourishes,
So that the hearer only hears
A ghostly murmur and not the cheers.

A forgiving tree draws tepid water
From its pitifully small patch of earth
Set amidst a barren desert of asphalt.
Its indignity is furthered still
As its leaves drop, not on the floor,
But on the bonnet of my Ford.

Has anyone seen my wallet?
I left it on the roof of my car
And drove my Christmas drive.
If you find it you can keep it:
I'm moving on.
Driving license,
A ton of reciepts,
Ten Euro note,
Maybe eight pounds cash
And a book of stamps.
Mostly a reminder of a dreary life,
Heavy, not with cash but ****** expenditure.

Go ahead, steal my ID,
Who'd want to be me?
Not I!
But, drawing a parallel
Between my wallet and I,
Deep in a quagmire,
Weathered by winter,
Waiting to be found.
Not very subtle I know,
But here's my rebuttal:
A seemingly tough exterior,
Vulnerable to stormy weather,
Stitching that will fail the test of time,
Spilling out its contents,
Laying bear all it once held in.

But if not found presently,
Maybe in time it will be,
And be of some passing interest
To some far off future finder,
Who'll wonder for a second who I was,
And ask, "how did it get lost?"
And "what became of those two children in the photo?"
And "what the hell was diesel anyway?"

He's not been well,
He's experienced a living Hell,
But he's got guts
And, over time, he's realised
It's not him that's ******* nuts.

The walk I wasn't on
Was, by all accounts, a good one,
I wish I'd been there
Because you were there,
But I bet you had nothing to say,
Probably distracted by nature's display,
Studying the forest's floor
Daring to be the bore
Looking up, occasionally
At the forest's canopy.

Scuffed brown shoes
With laces as long as your arms
Skip and scrape upon the cobbles
Skimming over tiny puddles
Reflecting a hundred suns
Dipping in and out of a thousand clouds.

"Don't be political" the Maestro said,
"It don't age well and it sure as Hell don't sell"
So I gave it up,
Called a by-election on my insurrection,
Lost my deposit
But couldn't give a ****.
Now I switch off the news
To focus on my muse:
The little things.
Yep, meditating on the minutiae
Is where it's at,
"Embrace the boring"
The Maestro added
"Politics will leave them snoring".
So here's to the mundane,
The housing estates
Where cars clog the streets,
The lunch deal brigade
Staring at the sandwiches,
The workplace kitchen
Where hygiene standards vanish:
A land called Mundanity,
Where the seemingly sane
Are all insane.