The surf rolls and
ripples like a centipede’s
cascading legs.

Emotional hubs are kicked
and dredged through
the Atlantic’s merciless brine.

Delivered, near drowned;
damaged minds lie as
detritus on a stony beach.

Thoughts are brittle
shells pulverised
into grains of sand.

Fragments of consciousness
castaway, where Loneliness
is a private beach.

Nascent budding rose –
Crimson swirl of gravid depth;
Blooms in ****** pall.

Solar flush of youth –
Petals parched as sandy dunes;
Crumbling into dust.

Shivering in the
corners of shadows;

clammy skin writhes, alive with
the gritty shuffle of feasting beasts.

Razorwire slices; evisceration,
collapsed innards, black bowel splatter.

Swathed in laughing black
clobber, mouth pinched in sneering folds,

the spinning turnip
crashes, reduced to trampled mush.

Once majestic,
the tattered
linen of your
sails sag.

The ripple of
the river is
your poem;

a swirling eddy
the final stanza.

The wardrobe

stands

empty,


panels of pine

no longer

brushed by the fabric of you.


The doors close,

sealed by a magnets kiss -

a mannequin's tomb.

Under the venerable
boughs of the Emancipation Oak,

leaves fell at liberty
into the laps of Afro-Americans.

Lincoln’s proclaimation
sowed acorns amongst dissent;

now mighty oaks grow,
conquering bitter winters.

Footfall sang like
glockenspiel chimes,
a metallophone
path of linear strides.
Back and forth, to and fro
jiving in and out of time.