Waving sails in red and white
catch the breeze and early light,
shiny rich men's toys of the ocean
dance in lazy undular motion

Three kids in a car

Two fast asleep

One awake

It was always me

Too much to see

Sipping on the mystery

The drama of silent midnight

Abandoned buildings wet with early rain

Still broken and brown from a war I had only heard about

Moonlight on shattered windows

Papers fluttered

A pub sign blew in the wind and squeaked as we stopped at the lights

And a painted peeling 'Jack the Ripper' moved in the fog

I closed my eyes and only looked a little bit

Enjoying the thrill

Safe in our solid old car with the radio playing softly

A pea green family tank to protect me from the darkness

The sleepy watcher at the window

Who had no idea she was a writer in training!

Life is a river

Flowing across the landscape

Warm and slow in the shallows

Furious in the depths

Of the torrent that is you

There are mountains to cross

And valleys to flood

High times and dry times

And only sometimes

A waterfall

To send you spiralling downwards in free-fall

Carving the earth

To your own design

There are fields to water

Fertile ground

Setting seed that you carry

Onwards

To grow in another place

While you continue

With the wind and the rain

Listening

To the siren call

When your river

Becomes an ocean

The past is a ribbon

Threaded with shiny beads

A curled string of memories

That once belonged to someone else

I'm tired

I'm not inspired

Poetic lease expired

None of us are sleeping

Fear is what is keeping

Half the world awake

Until we stagger up and take

Another step through another day

Six feet away

I cheered for the President
and raised my hat to the great man,
he promised prosperity
for all his supporters,
then he started a war,
when the rockets came
they did not know the difference
between me and my neighbour

Not exactly floating
not completely sinking
I have reached a place
where there is no conscious thinking,
it’s a liberation
to be free on the blue and wide
just a piece of driftwood
taken by the tide

The hammer blow

On your thumb

For a moment it's numb

A lightening flash

The clash of flesh and steel

Suddenly real

White hot rain

Reaches the brain

And converts to pain!

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

Love

Where does it go when we die?

Does it still flow?

Spreading like a river

Watering new fields

The crops we sow in life

For someone to reap

In return

A fertile harvest

For the next generation

Does hate do the same?

Many acts have been done in its name

Will it outlast the hater?

Poison the ground

Spread seeds

Choking weeds

Wither fruit on the vine

Bitter wine to swallow

The love and hate we leave behind

Continues through tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Everything bends to the singing wind

Frozen trees brittle and dark

Stark

Naked on hard and barren fields

All is sleeping

Resting in the cold

Fences crack

Rabbits nibble at freezing grass

Breaths frost the crystal air in hope of thaw

Silence rings

A cracking twig

Splits the purity a little

A pistol shot of noise

On a winter afternoon

They cut out the face of girl that was me,
and filled up the space where I used to be

Flowers come in all shapes and sizes

Like people

Did you ever see an ugly flower

They are natures gift to the earth

Like people

Sometimes there are just too many

They take over

Like people

It can take years for them to grow

Then they flourish and surprise you

Like people

The smaller less showy ones

Are often the most loved

Like people

We burn to learn

To seek to find

For a curious mind

The world is a mine

Of thoughts divine

And absurd

The written word

Is food

A layer cake

Built up and baked

Over time

Seasoned

With reason

I shall not come this way again,
I cannot hope to travel on the time I borrow
so I shall seize the chances given me today
and cast away the worries of tomorrow

Smoke which drifts and curls
Feeding the senses
Frosty beginnings
Bacon on the hob
Snow in the air
Crackled brown leaves on warm wood fires
Frozen Pine and tar on the door
A needle sharp morning
Crisp as a whisper
Brim full
With the scent of a mountain winter
Essence of bottled sometime
A perfume of the past

Wouldn't you like

To jump on a bike

Ditch all the pain

And the strain

Be ten again

No need to worry

No need to hurry

Fill each day

Full of play

Just like you did

When you were a kid!

Home is a house that's in me,
the place where I begin me

I wait for a bit

Watching my legs as they dangle

Bare feet

Not cold

I wonder

Try to talk myself out of it

Should I

Shouldn't I

My head is cloudy

I need to think

What's to lose?

Not much

What's to gain?

Brief pain

And then release

Peace

Hey that's a rhyme

It tickles me a final time

Should I try again

Be braver

Go back in and make it work

Sirens cut my thoughts into a thousand pieces

A smashed bottle on the sidewalk

They cluster below me

Ants around the leavings of a picnic

I'm here I call

But nobody is looking up

Because I already jumped

My glass is shattered

What's left is here

Roosting with the windswept pigeons

And the tiny plants that grow in the settlement cracks

Filling the voids in the building

And the one in me!

My soul is a bird that is flying free

Soaring high

Swooping low

It takes me to places where I can't go

A joyous

Ragged

Wind blown

Crow

It sits and watches

From the memory tree

The one that grows

At the heart

Of me

Moonlight slivers

Tear the sky of frozen grey

Shattering the ocean

A thousand sea glass fragments

That pitch and yaw and roll together

Long lost sailors raised from the deep

The concrete mixer chorus

Of roaring bells and gulls and ****

That shrieks of mermaid voices raised in  song

A never ending chant

No banshee wail could ever hope to drown

The  symphony of the sea

No one asked for this year

For universal fear

Or tears for those lost

There is no division

When every home becomes a prison

We are all scared

By what we have shared

We were in it together

Whatever the weather

Now we need a jump start

A shock to the heart

To get the world turning,

New life and learning after the burning

Fresh seed from the ashes of clashes

Will grow

If we want it to be so

Dreams die

Stars that fade

In our personal heaven

Leaving only the memory

Of tomorrows

And what might have been

To Create
Is the highest point of man
Not because you should
Just because you can!

It's your first day

Don't worry

You are new to life

I am older

I will hold your hand

And show you the way

You have so many roads to discover

Some we will travel side by side

Others we walk alone

One day you will leave me

Quietly in the shade of a tree

Following your own path

Don't worry

Memories will always lead you

Back to the roads we walked together

A stiff breeze

The ribbon bends

The world turns

Your world

My world

Our  world

Turns

The rope twists

This way

That way

The world turns

A strong wind

Blows the cord

Side to side

Up and down

The world turns

A strong wind

Blows the cord

Side to side

Up and down

The world turns

Flat calm

After the storm

Battered apple

Bruised to the core

Spinning

On a slender thread

To the metronome tick

Of time passing

The world turns

On a spiders web of glass

Your world

My world

Our world

Still hanging

Still turning

Still spinning

After the rain
during the silence that follows
in that cool calm moment
when sodden the earth retreats
and all is still around your feet
where there is no time,
just space
a thinking place to listen
the cicadas of memory start to sing

Bottled words
Boiled down
Until all that's left
Is meaning

No matter what deeds are done

No matter what words are said

Blood that flows in a gutter

Is always the same colour red!

A Heart

Is the start

The part

At the centre of you

It will see you through

From beginning to end

You can always depend

On your little red friend

Each and every place we look,
it's not the dying light which smokes upon the pyre,
but truth, and plain reality
opposed to that which we desire,
we cannot trust if all we know is doubt
and certainty is cast upon the fire

The words that slip

Wax

Dripping through your fingers

Lost in form

Melting

Snuffed away

The failing candle of the mind

Leaves only smoke

Bitter and drifting

Fleeting beauty

Hanging possibility

The lingering fragrance of what might have  been

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