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!

“Why me? Why no normal boring ****?”
Questions you've asked all your young life.
The miraculous odds of your conception
Offset by the misfortune of love unfit:
A birth of promise ultimately deceived.

Resilience failed to blossom.
'They' know little of your chronology of pain
But still ask the 'magic wand' question
In vain hope of solutions:
Solutions for you, their problem.

You test for trust, seeking attachments.
Instead, they humour you
Treat you with kid gloves
So your adolescence is a bitter surprise:
You’re no longer the person they can infantilise.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

I take a crash course in their existence,
Personal history, wishes and outcomes
Scribbled for a rudimentary assessment.

They are but scrappy souvenirs,
Notes that barely scratch the surface
Of lives that cannot be summarised.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

A cackle of Crows in her craw

I have placed my childhood bibles (that aren't Bibles) on your bookshelf; hidden them in plain sight. A cheap subliminal trick I know, but one meant as an investment in time and knowledge: to peck away at your curiosity like the Woodpeckers I hope you'll read about in that Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds, which to you, right now, is just a jumbo colouring book too heavy for your restless hands.

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.

This blue dot, home to **** Contrarius
Custodians and abusers of Earth
Who named everything seven thousand times
And created seven thousand differing deaths.

That mask of beauty
Unchipped flawless marble
Sculpted by aged chemistry
Intimidates but seduces me
Chokes thoughts, obstructs words
A simple mind disconcerted by
That mask of beauty.

Santa's house has many rooms:
One for every Elf.
They have sprays for farty fumes
And dusters for every shelf,
There are bins by every door,
And brand new hoovers for each and every floor!

Now all the Elves know their chores,
They've got them in their heads.
But tidying up is such a bore,
They'd rather go to bed!
Still, every room is clean and neat,
Because everybody knows Santa's always on the beat!

You see, Elves know they're super lucky...
They work each day for Ol' Saint Nick!
But if their rooms are ever mucky,
They'll be in for lots of stick.
For all that Santa asks of an Elf,
Is that their room is good for their health!

So every December night,
Ask yourself a simple question...
Would my room give Santa a fright?
If the answer's "yes" then hear the lesson...

An Elf's room is never messy,
Because they want a great big prezzy!

Ink dried quick
Art's potential energy
Music = MC²

Art can bide its time
Protected by the brave
Until primed

To explode off the page
Out of speakers into minds
As a weapon of mass attention

On the breath of twilight's yawn
Rose the star of dawn
Tireless in its cycle.

Just as a frog cannot relate to a tadpole,
He could not recognise his younger self.
No retrospective map of life had he,
No string-tied bundles of diaries
Or heavy-hearted Journals
To reunite him with the naïf
Who floated along life's river
Unaware of being navigated by others,
Others who rowed but did not instruct
And abandoned ship on the stroke of his eighteenth
Leaving him overawed and falling overboard,
To eventually flounder upon the shores of independence
Until he was forced to stand on his own two feet of clay,
Like some evolving amphibian
Waddling into life,
Stomping and stumbling in the quagmire of society.
A faux pas here, a faux pas there,
Slow and painful lessons
That built resilience and self-reliance
Resulting in a proudly self-made man,
Now unaccustomed to failure
And whose memories of humiliating failure
Have sunk to the bottom of the river of his life.

**** those clichés I never thought would apply to me,
But my love ebbs and flows unchecked   as routine keeps its hold
But on days like these when the whirlwind stops
And as your lifetimes coalesce into a loveful mass
A plumb line is thrown and tells of a soothing depth
Which, on this day of rest, I sink into.

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.

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.

Star jump
Slide to a bump
Mini Jeep driving
Forever striving
To win a race
Tie your shoelace
Stay on your feet
You won't be beat
Determination
No hesitation
Single-minded
Laser-guided
You won't conform
Not one for Unicorns
Find your voice
Beat the boys
You'll sprint through life
Overcome strife
Become resilient
Just be brilliant.
But, just for now,
No need to wow
I realise
I idealise
So go wild
Be a child
You know you oughta
My darling daughter ;-)

You weren't quite with it this morning
You bled Red-shifted light,
Soaked the clouds and stained the hills,
Startled a three year old
Not yet wise to your nature
"The birds haven't painted him yet,
He'll be Yellow again after Breakfast":
The reassurance of a father
Who does know your nature.
Of course, you got your act together
And, by eight o'clock,
You were basking in your own Yellow brilliance,
Like the celestial Emperor you are.

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.

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

On his frame hung the rotting fruits of his experiences
A living carcass bejewelled by hate and spite
Candied fruit soured by the fermentation of bitterness and regret.

I hung tantalisingly in the night sky
For a billion and more years,
Your coy companion,
Your one-faced little twin sister
Left barren by our mutual creation.
Glad was I then
- as an Aunt to your four billion children -
That you sent twelve to visit me in my dotage.
I do hope you visit in peace again soon.
Yours faithfully,
The Moon.

I'd like to pepper my poems
With referenes to Greek mythology
Or sprinkle a little Norse legend
Throughout my stanzas.
But, alas, it will never be:
For, you see,
I utterly failed my Literature GCSE.

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

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.

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.

Each passing day is an investment
A sacrifice of the present for the future.
As for the past, frivolous times forgotten,
Consigned to the bin of social media
Doomed to be infertile digital compost
By the time you are ready to bloom.

My friend is a very good man,
Nothing to hide
No terrorist ties
But still,
He really looks like Carlos the Jackal.

The further away I get from you
The more I can see into your past.
Time and space offer a grander view
Of how we made it last.

When we were joined at the hip
And our love was new,
All your faults were totally eclipsed
By my romantic idealised view of you.

I thought He whispered in my ear once
Ghostly sounds shaped like words
Too brittle to hear, too gentle to fear
Could His words be so fragile?
I never heard them again.

His mind's pained pleas echo
The brain's chosen words fragment
Inside his closed mouth