Dead leaves drowning
Leaping like Lemmings
From Tree to Sea

I've never owned a freezer.
Don't get me wrong,
I'm not a tight geezer,
I guess I'm just chilled
When it comes to use-by-dates.

Inverted scene of coast and air
Granite cliff clouds and sky of sea
You and I inbetween watching
The topsy turvy, roly poly play
Of two who cast their cares away

A ****** of Orange and Yellows
Pushed you through the Blue
Into the star spangled Black backdrop
For the White-Yellow companion
Of your Green and Blue Mother Earth.

There is art
That touches on our brief existence.
Art so refined,
So naturally attuned to
Life, Existence, Experience and Death
That Explanation is a waste of  words.
To me, it is song:
Beethoven's 9th
Songs For Drella
O Superman
God Only Knows
Underneath The Weeping Willow.
All hyper human,
Super surreal masterpieces
Beyond my evaluation.
So, thank you composers.

What wonders have my wasteful eyes overlooked
Over thirty years of fleeting footfall

A hungry desire for fitness and weightloss
Now yields to age and acceptance.

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.

"Follow your follower,
That's how Twitter works!"
That's what she told me.
Little wonder then, that
Social Media gets no one anywhere:
Fertile ground for circular arguments,
A deafening echo chamber,
Where debate is often choked at birth.

A hundred ***** dusty bleary-eyed windows open
As a deadly-dull town awakens
Unready and unwilling to take on another new day.
Each indolent inhabitant wishing away each minute, hour and day
Banishing any boy or girl who talks of "getting away".
Yes, a sad sullen town of little ambition,
Happy in its unhappiness,
Disembarks on another week
Allowing the woeful wintry weather to dictate its motivation
Glory be then, the rain that seems to fall perpetually
On the unglistening slate-grey slated roofs
That keep out the rain
But not the season's strong sickly grip.
To end at the ending?
Yes, let's,
This town is life's last stop
The end of a long long line
A lovely place to relax and whine.

You wanted to spare the blushes of the little boy
Who had ordered the book with the explicit cover
So you called him into the privacy of the corridor:
"Dyra fo yn dy ***"* you suggested gently
Handing over a book warm to the touch,
Wrapped in sellophane (as if to try to contain its power).

I've never forgotten that one-act play, nor its elements:
The subject compressed within its covers,
Your understanding and thoughtfulness,
The bewilderment of my ten year old self,
The discernment of Sbondonics**
But mostly the Hellfire unleashed by Little Boy fifty years prior.

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.

You need 20/20 vision
To focus on the good in 2018.
But don't lose faith,
2019 might surprise,
Positive rises and positive demises:
Let's not name names
(If I did, there'd be no surprises!)

Red Kite hovers and spies,
A Raven studies a dying lamb,
Sheep graze the grass,
A pheasant enters left looking lost.

I gaze out at this scene
Through sheets of glass.
I am distinct from real nature,
Cocooned by architecture.

Five men on stools:
Men of the hour seeking power.
Silly fools.
Bickering and sniggering,
Blowing their own trumpets,
Apart from He who blows a Trumpette
And cares not what he says,
And whose fans care not what he says
As he stumbles into power
And feels the hand of Churchill upon his crotch.

Love's expressions hide deep within my mind.
I lack a link from mind to mouth,
Dumbstruck whenever I am lovestruck.
My Cupid is mute and wears a Dunce's cap,
His hands quiver and his arrows blunt.
Despite this, I long to steady myself,
To sharpen my wit,
To hear my own voice tell of my love.
But this is too much, too soon
So I took to ink and paper to put words to feelings.
The pen hovered, frigid, not wishing to kiss the paper
But muscle was mightier than the sword
And with touch achieved, my love bled onto the page.
Finally, expressions of love were conceived.
Overcome, I tore out the page,
Read and read again
And vowed to read aloud my words.
However, it was not to be,
Shame, being my Nemesis,
Struck me dumb once more
And guided my hand to an old shoe box
In which I deposited this bill of love.

That youthful streak in you
Cared not for its state of repair.
The risk and reward of a joyride
Was irresistible to your impulse.
So, with a pickpocket's grace,
The key to car and fate was yours.

And so, to the moment
Where you left our reach:
Youthful daring did dictate
That the narrow asphalt stream you would take.
A hard black shimmering Styx,
That offered you a deadly deal:
Beat me one more time
Or your soul will be mine.

We're still unsure what occured,
That sunny, hope-filled evening,
The hedges and trees caught you in their grasps.

I like to think that this world knew your path,
That the trees and hedges' limbs were trying to slow you.

But their warning you did not heed,
Faster and faster
Not slower and slower.
Your treacherous instinct had kicked in,
The wounded car a wild horse
Who knew only one thing:
Run, run, run!

We knew it ended at a passing place,
(the irony won't let me forget)
A car driving the opposite way.
No room for you both
On this narrow stretch of the Styx:

You lost control,

Nature and mechanics lost their grips,

You went into a roll,

Your steed unseated you,

And, well...

We miss you.

Reality rushes to a single point
A concentrated truth ovewhelms

Am I free or imprisoned in the now?
Options become the stars and clouds

But vanish in a flash of lucid thought

Hazards lie in wait
As the Disco lights ignite.
Rhythm the seducer
The DJ the inducer.

The polite crowd clap and whoop
Their brogues and plimsoles tap the floor.
Yeah, they worship and adore
This little mess of a group.

Their tunes were never mainstream
Which is just how the cool kids like it
Their identities pursue the dream:
Reject the norm and fight it.

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.

The two of you rely on the two of us.
Such trust you place unknowingly.
No other life do you really know;
No yardstick but the notched door
That charts your slow-quick-slow growth.
But read between the notches:
The spaces between them represents nurture and nourishment,
Sustained by our love for you both.

The mystery stopped
When the apple dropped:
A simple, natural act
Of a fundamental law,
That keeps our feet on the ground,
Was written down
To little effect
On our state of being.
A pointless endeavour?
I think not,
A great leap of imagination
That escaped the pull of limitation
And opened the door to
Endless fascination.

When the torrent was weathered
A gentle bobbing on the calmest river followed
Where quenched fresh sunlight nurtured
A navigable peaceful joyous course.
But, as the first bend in the river approached,
The river's passenger sensed the current's change
No longer the bob-bob-bobbing of nursery rhymes,
Instead, ahead, a threatening rumble of waters deep and heavy
Where many a previous daydream had floundered.

I miss those days when I could turn heads,
And woke up each morning in other people's beds.

Pigeon in my loft
Shelter turned into a cage
Hence this sad high coo.

The petrol flowed into its stomach.
Me, its feeder and its keeper,
The taxed and the fined,
The disqualified and the uninsured.
The gullible, puppy-eyed fool
Who bought a machine
To make him look cool.

Cars are real jerks.

A funny thing occurred to me the other day,
Then deoccurred,
Then reoccurred.
Then it occurred to me that it wasn't that funny.
Well, nothing to write about anyway.

The ponderance of non-existence
depends on the soul's resistance.
Is death an altered state,
or is unknowing nothingness our fate?

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.