Your blue eyes
saw only sunflowers
painted smoky shades of living truth
frail petals fallen from your artists hand
lay upon the canvas
when sanity became a foreign land
what we failed to understand
you had a lust for life
it's true
we never saw it eating you

The woman in the wheelchair
still finds you funny although her laugh is silent
it is lost in shadow and smoke
hid beneath the cloak
of her stroke,
you can tell her a joke
she will probably get it
although the speaker may have gone
her sense of humour carries on

The world is insane

It was always so

Now we know about it

We infect each other

With our instant madness

Clever children found the matches

We can all watch the burning!

A room full of dark

    Hungry crows of worry peck at sleep

        Morpheus it seems is grounded

Peace,
a blissful moment of release
is it an object
a concept
or a verb,
or is a little note on your head
that says, do not disturb
is it in a garden,
filled with things you grew yourself
or does it come in shopping
and a bursting wardrobe shelf,
you decide,
there is only one of you that resides
and sometimes hides in that place inside

Release the mind and find
that earthly care is merely air
a puff of wind blown through your hand
a ripple over passing sand
for then we fully understand
our worries were the drifting snow
which covers all but quickly goes
revealing faintest hopes of spring
this final song we learn to sing
in peace that only death can bring

Tread lightly
as you walk through the summer of my dreams,
do not crush the grass
with the weight and banality of your reality
or bring cold facts which fall as rain
to shatter every fragrant bloom,
let me sit in peace,
safe within my flowered room,
I know beyond the wall
the world is calling harsh,
soon enough the gate will open,
but for now the bolt is holding
do not break it down,
or try to climb the fence
let me have my garden
in this place I am content

Four hundred years I stood  
a mighty oak of vast and stretching limbs  
until I fell, and then I lay,  
the home of scurrying beetles that you see today,
an old maid with a cap of spider lace
quite peaceful and content within my resting place

Life is a bathtub
stay too long
and you get wrinkles!

A favour granted

Is not willingly gifted

The clock is ticking

See your face in standing water
it reflects back the truth

No airbrushes in nature
no photoshop filters
you get what you get

Staring into the clear and glassy depths, right to the bottom
You think you can see through it, but really it sees through you!

From the beginning

Lets get things straight

I'm not your nation

Or your state

I'm not the moon

Or anyone's world

You cannot claim me

So leave your tiny flag unfurled

You didn't mark me

Like a dog on post

Leaving your scent

So you can boast

She's my *****

Because I'm not

Use the brain cell

That you got

Think real hard

And you might see

That I am laying claim

To me!

I'm just a bit peckish
and ready for a skirmish,
said the early bird
who was feeling wormish!

There is a time
for hoping
for praying if you wish
for watching and for waiting
but when that time has passed
there comes a time for bitter realisation
a time to stop the clock
a crying time
and a time to say goodbye

We sit together at separate tables,
two bitter old nags who share the same stable,
once we shared every beat of the heart
but somehow we ended up miles apart

No savage charm
no ancient witches hex,
no juju whispered low,
no knuckle bones to throw
or runic text to read and call you to your fate
poets have no powers,
no dark and evil incantations,
we weave a net of words
and lure you in with our creations

Wearied by grey,
hardly awake, but all too soon it comes
early doors,
it taps upon my sheets and bids a leaden sky outside to play
so appear the vague beginnings of another day,
sunrise drags the pavements and obscures the view,
no children yet, no happy chattering faces on the way to school,
no harassed rushing workers wondering what the day will find
the pleasures of a weekend break are scarcely brought to mind
amid the chaos of a busy life,
office stress which stirs up simmering bubbles,
the ever expanding troubles of our daily grind
which start off small and grow to fill our lives
that soup which feeds us, where we try to thrive
but what about the grey,
the newborn day, which hovers underneath a tardy sun
sturdy still and quiet, predictably it lingers,
digging with its fingers through the roots of all our lives
the light will send it hiding,
but be sure that it’s surviving, somewhere
locked inside our heads
Monday light’s revealing, brings a melancholy feeling
and a soon forgotten shadow of existential dread

Children play

Mouths open in silent wonder

Purple waves

Begin to roll

Lovers love

Holding hands

A final time

Together

Drowning

Faces lit with

Jasmine yellow

And fuchsia fire

Reflect the falling embers

Burning sky and haunted beauty

Sunset at the end of the world

If only I had wings to fly
The sky would not hold me
I would be so much more
Than a bird who could swoop and soar, and twist and dive
Alive, at one with spirits of the air
To drop each care
And watch it fall, like silent drifting feathers to the ground
Could there be a peace more sacred and profound

One who will give

Instead of take

Most of the income that they make

A lot of them are merely fake

They splash the cash but all the while

The guilt is there behind the smile

How do you think they made their pile?

She is the iceberg

That cuts a jagged hole in time

And a jagged hole in you

Scything deep

Carving the past

Leaving you adrift

In a sea of memory

No longer shared

Sleep peacefully now
A sinking sun paints the walls
Cancer drinks the light

The shapes of sleep

Day smoke that flows throughout our waking hours
released to tease and twist our darkling thoughts to landscapes, cities of the quiet mind

Shadow towers defined by nothing more than fancy and a little fact
the unassuming act of pressing day on night

Unconscious distant learning stoked by fear to feed and keep its belly still, and a little yearning when we need it

Our treasures taken from that mental box we keep

unlocked, explored and plundered deep

The grey and somewhat shop - worn curtains, covering the shapes of sleep

Happy is a department store
something to look at on every floor
if we know what we are shopping for
but generally we don't, do we?

Weighed down by rocks that were your words
I took me to the river, and tossed those pebbles far and wide,
then I found me a bridge that was burning
and danced to the other side,

Postcard memories,
a sky too blue
and a sea too green,
shown in brighter colours
than they ever could have been

Roll up roll up
put down your pennies
see the man who thinks he is Napoleon,
watch the lunatic dance on the White House lawn
laugh at his crazy utterings,
sitting on his throne with a plunger for a mace
and a toilet paper crown
isn’t it time we took him down, and removed him from display
gave him his meds and tucked him away in some secure place,
a safe and comfy padded space
for the good of everyone get him off show
the King of Bedlam has to go

Lay quiet as if sleeping
tide take you now
sea foam as your comfort
pillowed by the ocean
rest for a head that is weary of dreams
sleep soft my lovely
so pale on the waves
among the shells
and the waving water weeds
safe in Neptune's garden

Without you,
there would be no smoke to fill the empty heart with clouded joy,
no birds to sing and beat their wings to flame upon the fire
no melancholy note
which plays upon the heightened tightened string of deep desire,
no skies which fall and leave us chained
imprisoned on the altar stone, vaguest remnants of the fall,
we cannot know, we cannot tell
as the Master said when he was young
‘hey-** if love were all’

Yearning

When soul fire

Longs to be free

Heart and Bone

Ache

But the words don't come

And beauty is stilled

A dry garden

Dust in the wind

A living thing

empty

With the promise

Of rain

Tomorrow

I chewed on a pencil for tea
an unpleasant splinter of graphite 2B,
my head machine purrs, but cogs do not whir
nothing stirs,  
no word flowers grow,
I need some more seeds,
are they herbs are they verbs or irritating weeds  
I don't know,
how this could be so,
I will make me a garden for rhymes to bloom,
poems only flower if you give them some room

I cannot drink you,
or eat until I reach my fill,
I cannot savour every rise and hill,
consume each circling bird that drifts in flight
or charge my glass with graceful morning light,
I can only hold you,
fold you as a memory to keep and put away,
and promise that with luck I may return one day

The tiny bit that you don't see

I only keep it around for me

The one that's there when I'm on my own

Who I am when left alone

I have others I don't hide

But that's my public facing side!

When velvet night

Gives way

Before the light of dawn is day

And lights the  eastern sky

With soft and painted grey

To chase the stars away

My hometown coat don’t fit no more,
the pockets stuffed with memories
of who I was before,
I found new clothes of peacock blue
when I was seventeen
but underneath the seams still pinched
although it wasn’t seen,
plastic buttons tarnished
by things that might have been,
I find no need to keep it,
I'll shed my former skin,
and dump it in a bin-bag
so that healing can begin,
I know some threads will linger
no matter how I try
most will go at the traffic lights
when I wave the past goodbye

Never flush
not tight fitting
a little bit out
not quite sitting
right with the world,
I always was an odd bit of knitting,
two plain stitches instead of purled

We are all dust.

Mere chaff blown on the hot winds of an African summer long ago,
when the world was fresh and humanity still sailed on clouds of air we soared above the baking earth and knew the freedom of the stars, not tethered to the ground in bonds of flesh and bone.

Dust we were and dust we will become again, in the end it's all the same.

Just dust!

Shadows caught
waving curtains
nervous fingers
ever tapping
never still
beyond
and
beyond
and
beyond
the endless glassy spirals
filled with glassy spirals of their own
shattered fractal light
tight and broken pieces
filter
flicker
gutter
fall
in darkness
lie in muted heaps
so die the painted shades of sleep

In the bungalow of your thoughts
you can sit and fume at the world
while you wrap your soul
in angry net curtains!

Soft falls the light upon your face
shadowing each trace of sleep
who am I to know or see
the secrets that you keep
we give our minds
to flights of dreams
but only to ourselves it seems