I don’t want to sound like a ******
Accidentally pretentious
I sense this, prevent this
With pausings in musings
But consciousness, man
It’s a whole thing, isn’t it?

Moving, zipping, travelling
Across time and place
No shifts in space
Ultimate game of Pong
Bats are half images,
ghosts of smells,
light or heavy ****** impacts,
sounds, songs, poems
Triggers lightly but firmly bouncing us from
now to then,
then to when,
but always here to here
Across time and place
No shifts in space

Sometimes transitions are smooth and buttery-safe
-- I didn’t even realise I was thinking about trains and now about dinner
-- ping, pong, ping, pong
-- a metronomic, Wimbledon soundtrack
But then one player hits the ball too short and too high
and then the
Echoing crack
Bats us into sometime somewhen darker
The feckless defensive player manages to scoop the ball
just before it touches sod, but too short and too high
and then the
Echoing crack
Strongly, crisply, sharply
Smashed into jangly memory
Clear and incomplete
Real and impossible
Laser focus on The Bad Thing
Other details, window dressing
Breathing quickens, heart keeps the beat
The Image, or
The Smell, or
The Grip on My Ankle
Is faithfully replayed
Full colour, Dolby surround sound, Memory cut
The Grip on My Ankle
Is faithfully replayed
The Grip on My Ankle
…
…
…
Mind taps out for a bit
Consciousness slide into foggy nowhere, no time
Breathing slows, heart keeps the beat
Might just stay here
Cool, fuzzy fog is my best friend
Until fog-resistant, persistent stimulus insists
that I return
Ping
Clear-eyed now
Pong
Pasta sounds nice
Triggers lightly bouncing me from here to here

Staplers and hole-punch
Paper, signatures, and stamps
Busy, busy work
Audit error, office closed
Oncoming apocalypse

---

“If you are viewing this instructional video, you may be having some glitches with your audit processes. Don’t panic. From time to time, any bureaucracy worth its hole-punch will need to conduct an audit.

Daily dandy-desk-documented fun
Standard sunny-systematised-stapled hijinks

However, sometimes, there is a clerical error, or worse, a process deviation. If this occurs during an ordinary, 8:45am-5:20pm workday, the standard review process can be implemented, commencing on the same day, should the error be detected before 12pm, and if later than 12pm, commencing on the next working day. The typical review timelines can then follow, ideally 3-5 business days for information gathering, followed by committee consideration dependent on the 6-weekly cycle and agenda length.

Expected. Thorough. Busy. Reassuring.
All systems nominal.
Stamping and signing rates above baseline.
Working hard, at a sensible, sustainable pace. Amiright?

Unfortunately, occasionally,
something cataclysmic happens
bottom right on the risk matrix
(likelihood=E (rare) x consequence=5 (catastrophic))

Hold onto your staplers…
A fault occurs during the audit.
An audit error in the error audit.
This results in the dreaded, circular,
Paper Ouroboros Paradox.  
At this point, the
perfectly procedured
copybook committeed
faultlessly filed
bureaucracy
will implode.

The only way of avoiding POP is
a concurrent process to audit the
audit, we call this The Meta Audit.  
The bookish amongst you may want to say
that would increase the circularity
(moving POP from likelihood=E, to D!)
Don’t worry, we run the Meta Meta
Audit to make sure that never happens.

Our favourite galactic bureaucrat avatars, the Vogons, were the first race to encounter the pure, paper-curling hell of TMA. That is why these instructions are written in poetry, of sorts. But not Vogon-authored poetry, of course, even though
the quality
and honestly
the policy
of the potential use
of these directions
or sections
or connections
for torture
Have never been directly investigated.

The KPI for TMA is known as the
Kafka-Cockroach Distance
measured in imaginary cockroach lengths (icL).

Under potential conditions of
POP, the TMA KPI KCD starts at
42 icL
     and counts down with
     every fatal meta error:
       -Information presented to audit
         committee in triplicate
         instead of quadruplicate,
41 icL
      -Audit presentation containing
        27 slides instead of 26,
        as clearly outlined,
40 icL
     -Email about colonoscopy sent
       to audit address list instead of mum,
39 icL
     And so on.

You’ll know when you reach 17 icL,
You’ll see the cockroaches.
Conveniently, this makes measurement simpler

Now you know how to calculate your Kafka-Cockroach Distance, you can audit your audits with perfect assurance and insurance.

---

This bureaucracy
Kafkaesque catastrophe
Dear Douglas Adams
Thanks for giving me words for
Processing my processes

Lucid is better, so better be lucid?
Discernible ‘yes’ from word-keeps on high
Merriam says it’s clear thinking between
--confusion (sounds bad), or insanity (worse)
Those on the edges can feel what I mean
Our grand word-keeps really must justify
       The mean in this meaning,
       out-bounded by boundary,
       lined-out by this outline,
       now liminal quandary

Lucid is better, so better be lucid?
Webster, my friend, have you deep-thought this through?
Sanction is clear from this definite frame
-- English agrees, but is that important?
English is not the sole tongue in the game
Here is a series of queries for you      
       Can you margin it all out?
       The hurt and the fallout?
       For people who crawl out
       adrift from your callout?
      
Not-lucid has rescued me more times than countable
And really not-lucid has caught me mid-fall
Through memory patches of pain insurmountable
Muddling dull was the best break of all
The cogent, coherent, and clean-comprehensible
Can open tight *****-capped emotional stores
Unprocessed experience, only defensible
By wool-wrapping windows, and baffling doors  

Lucid is better, so better be lucid?
Politely diverge from Merriam’s word
Webster’s position humanely disclaim
       --Gratitude-pour over fuzzy and haze
Cloud-foggy, mind-misty, heavy, mush-brain
Rational praised, but when needed, deferred
       Hail shields of deep feeling
       all lucid-real reeling
       rewinding revealing
       to heel allows healing

‘Lucid? Not always’ the kindly refrain
Outsiders rest on the inside again
And never confuse, confused and insane

Grim weather workday
Co-workers tower and storm
Frustration wind gusts
Colleague’s deep weeping deluge
Workwear, my only shelter

Hi-tech coveralls
Cold tin pressed over concrete
Full-body shielding
Spikes guarding critical zones
Early threat sensor system

-------

--Tricky meeting one---
Sensors detect unstable air
Towering cumulus,
   imposing updraft,
     condensing vapour,
       supercooled drops,
       colliding particles,
       electric charge,
       energy below 100 Hertz,
       below 20 - infrasonic range,
       cloudburst impacts,
       downdraft wedge,
       gusts at 90 km/h,
     winds slowing,
   anvil passing,
dissipating feeder air

-Coffee break-
Systems check
Minor damage
Vibrations neutralised
Commence shield repair

-Tricky meeting two-
Scans register earlier storm damage
Key infrastructure stressed,
  dam failure,
    imminent water surge,
       significant hydrologic activity,
       evacuate downstream,
       clay soil,
       infiltration below 2 mm/h,
       gage data above action stage,
       avoid low spots, streams, and rivers,
     sandbags in place,
     wall seals holding,
    precipitation easing,
  infiltration nominal,
subsiding flood water

-Coffee break-
Systems overload
Unable to assess damage
Full reboot required
Commence systems reset

-------

Home brings fine sunshine
Joy-filled fluffy puppy front
Gentle joy breezes
Clear skies, household index high
Soft clothes, it’s cuddle weather

My eyes are clear
Opening my lash-eyelet curtain
A near-perceptible glacier-clean,
--thud-crack of thick ice
Forming two, perfect, transparent, oval shards
Convex bevel edges
Satisfying symmetry.

My brain is quiet
Waiting for the roaring, train engine, kettle-boiling,
punctuated by slight, syncopated,
tap-taps that,
-- so kindly, remind me, my mind be, relying
-- on pulsing blood
Still roarless
Still, roarless
Spline-smoothed
Blood journeys gently, cloud-style
Not muddling, befuddling, nimbostratus
Just happy little cumulus
Soft. Nice.

My shoulders are low
Cage only soundtrack here
Absence of intended sounds
Only the astral smooth void
Flawless, measured, even space
My ears can kiss my shoulders if I feel like it
--but I don’t feel like it
Comfortable.

My breath is even
Jaws are open pliers
Thoughts are photos in ice and midnight blue
-- no rue umber or regret beige
Muscles are liquid-warm wax
Palms are oasis-free deserts
Pupils are obsidian-shined globes
Skin made of moonlight
Heart matching the beat of the universe

I have returned
Back inside myself
I am here.

What was your crime?
Was it heinous,
Or trifling?
What was so bad that could leave you like this?
Was it hard at the time?
To sustain us,
While stifling
-- all of the feelings that couldn’t exist?

Was it too vast a weight
To be wielded
Unaided?
Or was it too great for an army to bear?
Too small to relate
Or too shielded
Spoil-shaded?
To understand all that was happening there

But I’m no longer small
Or at least
I am older
I’m ready to know what was tethering you
Or chasing you down
Like a beast
Or a soldier
With a thin sheen of orange, when green wouldn’t do

It’s okay to tell me
Exhibit
Or model
Emotions, by spoonful as heavy as lead
To let it all out
To live it
No bottle
For weeping, and raging, and mourning the dead

Still neither we know
How to feel
These things safely
The throat-ripping scream that may never quiet down
The full force of hate
That’s so real
To me lately
The terrible fury no bottle can drown

The shocking events
That founded
Those feelings
The violence and panic-lashed vigilance born
Their timbre makes sense
Compounded
Their meanings
No piece their experience doesn’t transform

But why such deep shame?
Some misdeed
Or error?
Your fault that’s a focus for manifest wrongs
The heightening frame
Of this need
Is as ever
Pointed internal where mercy belongs

It’s okay, I know
Self-kindness
Is fleeting
More tricksy than empty-glass, bottle-stirred glee
Emotions may flow
In rightness
Repeating
       The heinous, the trifling, transfigured care-weightless
       The self-sighted shame now silk-slightful and shameless  
The criminal pardoned and duly set free

A scratching on the concrete path
– thin plastic
The brittle kind
Slight enough to slide slowly, in a low breeze
A tiny ping as something caught
– elastic
A flabby find
Light enough to stretch feebly, then a soft squeeze

An eye-shock from the brazen tones
- the clown mask
The grotesque face
Bright enough to clash basely in the Autumn mood
A smudging from the thickest lips
- crazy cast
All ****** grace
White enough to bold highlight the ****** hues

I wonder why it’s lonely now
- lost costume
But just one part
Strange enough to fare poorly in the candy stakes
Bit too obscure for Halloween
- low volume
No candy heart
Change enough to read oddly, as jokes or aches

       Large, ill-set eyehole blues
       - hint at bacchanalia
              A single tear at sadness       
              The open mouth at madness
       Impossible to choose
       - with no paraphernalia

       Child, was your clown-face mask
       - giggle-shed or snigger-skinned?
              Too wet from crying laughter?
              Forgot to get it after?
       Or did you run too fast,
       and lose it in a gust of wind?

Or was it just too complex for
- your fresh face
All comic-dressed
Mixed enough to sit weirdly - no candy here
The others didn’t know to help
- save your place
They tried their best
Fixed enough to get through
       The single tear
       Perhaps next year

Beyond worth
Knew it at a glance
Never had a chance
Verdict-stuck and public scorned
Hardly noticed, never mourned

Beyond hope
Always them to blame
Father was the same
Ruling-locked and villain stained
Nature surely deep ingrained

Beyond thought
Pointless waste of time
Never mind the crime
Cover-judged and rubber stamped
Name and image rumour-tramped

Beyond help
Judges sit unmoved
Felonies unproved
Stigma-sword to reputation
Vanished view of approbation

Beyond sight
Don’t avert your eyes
Recognise the lies
Tarnish-washed and shame-suspended
Approbates with hands extended
       Repeat until we’re justice-mended

Swooping, sliding, soaring safety
When I had my wings, ribbed dragonfly sheer
Diaphanous as worldly knowledge
Veins, membranes, and spikes
Glass-smooth at eye-line
And in between all chitin clear

Comfort, cuddling, warmly wing-wrapped
When I had my wings, silk gossamer tough
Impregnable as guileless graspings
Steel, Kevlar, and gum
-- echoes at finest
No human copies quite enough

Earnest, peering through pale wing-shields
When I had my wings, light strawberry blush
Full optimist in rosy child-sight
Hope, trust, and ease
Lucent at sunrise
But sunset wipes the pearly flush

Thorny learning came at sunset
When I lost my wings, ribbed dragonfly sheer
Conspicuous in adult hindsight
Screen drawn, and lost
Sombre in umber  
World full of weeping, sweeping clear

Our organic architect leaves the stage
Her window-pane sails, in delicate rose
Better to know the world at its worth
All sad glory
In plain sorry view
Shoulders itch, remember their clothes

When I had my wings

Medusa, how your sisters suffer still
We hope, because in you, we see ourselves
Our stories transform, as yours always will

Your myth eternal-shifts on steady shelves
Our female thermostat for social mores
We hope, because in you, we see ourselves

Bewitching minx, besmirched Athena’s laws
Woman-judged and hexed when male-defiled
Our female thermostat for social mores

Mortal monster, murdered and reviled
Early poster child for victim’s curse
Woman-judged and hexed when male-defiled

Beheaded gorgon, potent beauty birthed
A sister sign of fury, seen at last
Early poster child for victim’s curse

From villain crone rebuilt, crusader-cast
Medusa, how your sisters suffer still
A sister sign of fury, seen at last
Our stories transform, as yours always will

--Entry 0001--

At daystar distance, light-time 9.2
Reached orbit of a lonely little sphere
Inhabitants, galactic refugees
Lost beings fled for working atmosphere

From orbit I observe a solid wall
Bisecting the small planet into two
Is this the same as walls they made at home?
Before, their earth in ruin, they withdrew

Remote-scan sensors indicate two groups
One group in light brown garb, and one in beige
Communities uncoupled by the wall
No circumstantial need to co-engage

The beings take position near the wall
Their blasters in the air, as if to war
Will need a closer look to understand
Assembling ground crew for a recon tour

--End Entry--

--Entry 0010--

Away Team One have scouted both the camps
And both took great attention to explain
That cosmic contrasts sit between the two
So never to be reconciled again

The 'Northers', in their light brown town, *****
To Iris, God of Moon, a monument
The eye a symbol of this watching one
A stone displays his holy document

‘O God of cycles, ebb and flows of life,’  
The stone acclaims this lunar deity
The tablet smooth on left, and rough on right
Abiding token of fertility

The 'Southers', in their beige, build one as well
But this, a shrine to Os, the God of Bones
His sigil skull expresses loss and death
Indelibly recorded on his stone

‘O God of dying, born of earth and sky,
Hereafter and rebirth as well as death’
This stone that sits adorned with crook and flail
--is baby-smooth on right, and rough on left

Away Team One weaved worry through their tale,
A looming war was set to decimate
So, find a concrete plan to intervene
And hope and pray that we are not too late

--End Entry--

--Entry 0100 --

Away Team Two report the wild events
This sphere will be immortalised in verse
For these effects of war upon this day
So tracked that all our plans could not reverse

The first explosives wall-bound from great arms
Start slowly causing breech and then a fall
The northern and the southern lands revealed
Sameness no longer hidden by the wall

And for the first time see the glory stones
Sit, monument atop, aloft on shrine
An eery match in form and font and voice
A paired, reflected hail to the divine

An astral silence, weapons come to rest
Then reverent 'Northers' fetch their hallowed stone
While devout 'Southers' hold their tablet too
A meeting reuniting moon and bone

And suddenly as tablets are aligned
The warriors unblinded to the con
Of holy tablets two, and each with God
At origin the two were only one

The beings face-to-face now with their God
Examining the reassembled tome
Not Os and Iris, but Osiris there
A single God writ on a single stone

So smaller differences in brown and beige
And seeming larger gaps from death to birth
       Now seen complete, more holy as their whole
       Dualities reflected in one soul
Now possible a new united earth        

--End Entry--

We wait outside long closed electric doors

    
        At last, you take my hand, you cloud-float up
        
            Hospital gown draped over a balloon

                Oxygen mask string dangles, now relaxed

                    Its work is over, I still hold your hand

                        My heels lift slightly, I still hold your hand

                            I can’t come with you; time for letting go,

                                We smile, you float -- drip, tape, and bandage free


My toes have never left their asphalt base

My dearest dream,
    and
        I still feel your hand

Another ordinary day
A damsel wakes with father fear
Reluctantly pulls blanket back  
As thoughts of resting disappear

From messages left unreturned
A growing feeling to embark
So, to his door set off to seek
Her unresponsive patriarch

Our damsel finds the bolted door
On floating breeze, smoke scent conveyed
The clock ticked quicker, locked without
Prompt call for hasty rescue aid

Blazed into action in a flash
—our scorching young protagonist
His searing skills foundation-forged
To save an injured arsonist

Our hero spots a bold ingress
An aperture at altitude
And meanwhile spies a driver’s card
—appearing strangely barbecued

Attention-torch on task-at-hand
On bended knee to deftly bring
—our damsel up, with strapping arm  
To reach the lofty opening

Our star-struck damsel, hero-held
Enchanted by his smouldering gaze
Wonders on what might have been
If meet-cute happened other-ways

Then slipping lithely window-wise
She drops inside the residence
Let hero in, then victim search
While mental-logging evidence

Sticky hi-***** rest in pairs
—their bottles languish laterally
Permeating smoky trace
Each clue arranged unnaturally

Recalls the messes passed outside
The slumber-tilted char-filled grate
Suggests a rather vigoured dance
With lumbering unsteady mate

And there our wounded, mattress-bound
Though coverlet obscures him still
His body marred in major part
From falling on his lighted grill

That solo night with drinks for two
—set grill for dreamy warmth, and then
Was flame-kissed in his doomed attempt
To bring his lost love back again

The sloshing, dulling, drink-fired trance
All woozy, stumbly, bonfire-played
He scrambled indoors, mattress-jelled
No manner for alerting aid

The damsel-daughter rescue-wrapped
Her father truly bottle-broke
As panic builds, all hero dreams
Well vanished in a puff of smoke

First thoughts occur, ‘If only aid
—had come before to stay this fate’
The thought reply, ‘But even so,
before this fire, was still too late’

Stuck helpless in her helping role
As supine father gurney-glides
Recalls the times and times before
The medically supported rides

The bottle holds a fire-fuel
That firefighters can’t suppress
A complex, clawing, crawling pain
That leaks into a shared distress

Constant, judgeless, shame-free love
The only hope to smother flames
A blanket of persistent souls
To search for joy when none remains

Without these tools for fire fight
The flames repeated encore flare
So, we are left ‘if only’ bound
       Our loved ones to another round
       That crackling roar the only sound
All fire-kissed and blanket bare

Her recumbent silhouette
       suggests a resting cello,
Reinforced by two-tone robe
       with maple-cedar sash,
The relaxing redwood deck
       reflects her sleeping shadow,
Resonance in light-dark notes
       —mahogany and ash

Her adorning muted hair
       evokes the Polish horses,
Rosin dusts the frog-tip leash
       from gold and silver tail,
A lamenting solo air
       reverberates with losses,
Transposes down the Saint-Saëns Swan
       into a minor scale

The veranda’s cypress pine
       protects a tiny surface,
Imitates a child-sized shade
       to stay the waves of pain,
The descending water drops
       engulf the resting cello,
The air cries, “They are gone now”
       and so, we let it rain

Dear Carl,

Can I call you Carl?
Our unconscious is collective and a lake of shared experience.
Is the internet an instance of your theories?
I have some queries.

Are these the facts Carl?
Our reflections are collected in a cloud of pooled intelligence.
Is the aggregate a marker of our species?
I have some theses.

Are these our thoughts Carl?
Our enquiries through our browsers hint a dull and cloudy somnolence.
Is the synthesis the same by demographic?
Is this just traffic?

Is this our worth Carl?
Our reprovals and our sledging smacks of asinine belligerence.
Can we speculate more broadly from this sample?
Trolls, for example…

We all have separate phenotypes,
made up of common archetypes,
that form a unique prototype,
for human contribution.

The flavour of each megabyte,
requires an active acolyte,
that gives objective oversight,
to tally the solution.

But what about the eloquence,
beneficence, benevolence,
the sympathetic sentience,
within this cyber-netting?

And what of interinfluence,
of conscious counterviolence,
considered, caring, congruence,
of giving more than getting?

Are you happy Carl?
Your proposals once ethereal now digitally real
—the collection of our thoughts a cyber-consciousness reveal.
Sure, we focus on crash diets, haircuts, shoes, and plastic surgery.
We are more than just a vessel for the latest celeb pregnancy.

These excuses for connection are a cybernetic basis,
for the comfort and affection found across our networked spaces.
While the electronic camera snaps the shadow and insanity,
it also frames our kindness in the brilliance of humanity.

I think it’s fine, Carl.

Sincerely,
Jill

All great creative storytellers know,
As you do, Adams, Asimov, and Wells,
The time machine was built so long ago

Expression chassis, tonal power cells,
The primary engine, sending us with word,
As you do, Adams, Asimov, and Wells

The second engine, flashback, and a third
—portend, exhausts each piston-fired clue,
The primary engine, sending us with word

The epoch steering, future or review,
Remember back, or forward fantasy
Portend exhausts each piston-fired clue

Captain Imagine, Wingman Memory,
With engines run on image, tone, and phrase,
Remember back, or forward fantasy

Like Atwood, Pratchett, Liu, and Philip K,
All great creative storytellers know,
With engines run on image, tone, and phrase,  
The time machine was built so long ago

Jam-packed case for just-in-cases
       No way of knowing when you gotta jam

Loafers with no-loafing laces
No-track tracksuit for no traces
Boxing boxers, bracing braces
       Wool-coated trench coat for time on-the-lamb

Racewear dress for dressy races
Full-face mask to hide full faces
High-pace sneakers, sneaky paces
       Bent scrambling helmet if hellbent to scram

Sleeveless tanks for arm-y bases
High-jump jumpers for high places
No-halt halter, hasty chases
       Hoodwinker hoodie obscures who I am

Jam-packed case for just-in-cases
       No way of knowing when you gotta jam

Scarpered for the siren liquor
Shame-seared claret cheeks
Lost to time and regulation
Found by terrified relation
Taught that gravity was quicker
Supine in the streets

Too pie-eyed for interventions
Fuddled buccaneer
Too aware for rectifiers
No relief with pacifiers
Banished now for contraventions
No more welcome here

Therein lies the contradiction
Tricksy elbow-******
You designed this cunning passport
Teamed constabulary transport
Speedy coveted eviction
Purposeful offender

Now we nurse the convalescent
Scarring quips ignore
Dodging pleading, wounding protest
Culpable without an inquest
Feeling without feel-depressant
Pain-drink tug-of-war

Where to put our damaged kindred
Languishing in grief
Ductile truth in glass distended
Remedies are not extended
Therapies are judgement-tinted
Distanced from relief

Imminent familiar wipeout
Nowhere safe to be
Don’t do as the doc suggested
Cede to being bottle-bested
Bottle-lock in private hideout
Throw away the key

I grew up by the beach
Air salt and sunscreen
Houses squat on dunes
Calendar in scratchy sand
All yellows and brindle

Winter scored in cactus ketch-groans
Summer seagull soundtrack
Snake sunbakes
Kikuyu crunches

Now home is hillside
Rosemary jasmine breeze
Every pane a picture
Year parades in colour
All purples and greens

Spring exits in lily lavender
Soft sepia summer
Auburn autumn
Jade July

And in unison agave flower
Invisible itinerary
Monocarpic masts
Noble nativity

Curtains to overture
In purples and greens

Now plenty of books. Redundant the quill
Queries well-sated; papyrus well-served
Journalist, poet, and dramatist still
Recumbent and smug, securely preserved
Smirk for the camera illustrious friends
Expressions freeze-frame, the genteel applause
Locutions abed, your industry ends
Settled profession contently withdraws
Troublesome confound? Don’t answer yourselves
All is deciphered, on parallel shelves

What innovation now possible here?
Planet post-poet not artist-constrained
Transmitting thinker nor analyst peer
Unburdened truth-sleuths repose addle-brained
Yet further books, birth ideas that birth more
Science yields questions more often than fixes
New voices surface as wave serves the shore
Shapes settled sandbars, produces admixes
Now plenty of books? The only rebuff
Plenty will never be plenty enough

Stupidly genius, moronic and shrewd people eat their fast food on fine China
Failing is vertical, errors are slander
Their gross insults impacting easy digestion
Hyperbole falsehood messiah

Piercingly silent and ardently soft people keep their opinions on fences
Insults are weaponry not to be yielded
Their platitudes cradling fragile personas
Perversely destructive defences

Classically learned and bookishly rich people carry their privilege with kindness
Science is built with colonial scaffolds
Their method constraining all true innovation
Parochial qualified blindness

Shockingly worthy and recklessly small people polish their boots with lead solder
Gravity holding them grounded and upright
Their bootlaces impacting aerodynamics
Inferior sturdy upholder

Gallantly serving and fearlessly trained people douse the political embers
Fire escape blocked with hobnails and lumber
Their pickaxes caught in the thick poison ivy
Nugatory self-rule defenders

The silent, the learned, the worthy, the trained people trade voyeurism for vision
Hologram values are no longer trump cards
Their gazes averted from hate-dripping sophists
Integrity first coalition

Feet leave the floor in drumbeat-timed pulses
Sandwiched by giants, I undulate there
At zenith I glimpse, the lead singer’s hair

Crowd-bound congested, controller convulses
Unobserved passenger bobs in the air
Feet leave the floor in drumbeat-timed pulses
Sandwiched by giants, I undulate there

World is all movement on giant-jump trusses
Weird carousel in need of repair
Invisible rider evading the fare
Feet leave the floor in drumbeat-timed pulses
Sandwiched by giants, I undulate there
At zenith I glimpse, the lead singer’s hair

Don’t give me your feed
-back, -down in the sand
-pit, -fall in the band
-width

Onboarding cost, competence lost, budgetary frost

Don’t mess with my head
-count, -down to the start
-up, -take until hard
stop

Low-hanging fruit, slim-fitting suit, payroll dispute

Don’t throw me the ball
-park, -run in your lane
-way, -out of my brain
-storm

Sanity check, turbo pitch-deck, stretching your neck

Don’t gift me your work
-stream, -line up the play
-back, -down in the grey
-zone

Dropping the *****, lining the halls, walking the walls

Don’t ping me a straw
-man, -go with your best
guess, -work in a stress
dream

Cracking the whip, losing your grip, sinking the ship

In gravity handcuffs, I don’t need a check-up
I’m fighting inertia, while trying to reverse a
       malicious assertion, resisting coercion,
I’d really prefer a fleet-footed desertion
Or chemical recess, a little-lunch brain-bliss
Just something to blur the emotional burn that
       smacks hard when I wake up and threatens to freeze me
I should take it easy…

Don’t, think I’m a waste-
land, -slide in the deep
dive, -down in the ****
bed

Bored by the ****, losing my wit, apathy pit

-Quietly quit-

Hey, have you seen it?
I can’t find it anywhere
I thought I left it with my triumphs
I couldn’t find those either

It might be wedged between my trophies
I hate it when that happens

Or maybe it’s mixed up in my love letters
Or my performance reviews
Or my pay slips

Is it in my CV?

Ah, there it is!  How silly of me

It’s nestled in the neat pile of ballpoint pens, with lids, that write smoothly, first time
It’s in the cutlery drawer with a full complement of teaspoons and forks
It’s among the neatly paired socks, fresh from the line, no sock missing its partner
It’s among the dozen, perfectly iced cupcakes that were just the right size for their box
It’s on the dropped toast that landed honey-side up

And all the other impossible ordinary objects

Scared and small
Tiny fingers stretched
from trembling hands
Reducing
My near-invisible child

Loud and mean
Nasty onslaught aimed
in and outward
Maligning
My hardened cynic

Sad and lost
Streaming eyes held low
with purple sills
Anguishing
My grief ghost

Earnest and curious
Love for people, loud
and pulsing warm
Exhorting
My moral rebel

Strong and brave
Combat stance all force
in white-hot flame
Conquering
My elven queen

My inner fellowship
Child, cynic, ghost, rebel, queen
Present, at calm attention
Carrying matchless lessons
Pulling in rare directions
Born of distinct conditions
All in service of me

Does that answer your question?

Pour me another, to recess we go,
Tender the whiskey or beer in my hand
Feelingless furlough with barleycorn glow

Hazard as high as perception is low
Don’t tell my mother, she won’t understand
Pour me another, to recess we go

Scars are clothes-covered and flesh wounds don’t show
Hide all my bruises, pretend that I’m grand
Feelingless furlough with barleycorn glow

Don’t call my mother, she won’t want to know
More to these feelings than she would have planned
Pour me another, to recess we go

Call the Mourne Mountains, and rosin the bow
Rattle the bog and the black velvet band
Pour me another, to recess we go

Don’t tell my mother, she still doesn't know
Sentiment-soaked more than she could withstand
Pour me another, to recess we go,
Feelingless furlough with barleycorn glow

It raises hopes again, steady the sway of it,
no victory in the game, it’s just the play of it.

It makes you drop your guard, it’s not the battle’s end,
no capture of the land, it’s just the lay of it.

No time for winding down, for optimistic ease,
no loosing of this knot, it’s just the fray of it.

You’ve seen this one before, in rosy camouflage,
it’s neither black nor white, it’s just the grey of it.

As good as you admit, as wicked as you think,
no ending of the world, it’s just the way of it.

.
Published by Trash to Treasure Lit, April 1, 2025

Barbies wear muselet helmets
Sherlock journals clues
Cricket-stump bin clinks dismissal
Bread is hard with mouldy middle
Cheese is soft with tinted velvets
All in greens and blues

Newspapers a carpet curtain
Other signs of note
Sinks drain-weary, veiled by dishes
Door blocked from unseen militias
Ashtrays strain with liquid burden
Mangled ends afloat

Late-night fry exudes lard landslide
Interesting leads
Window signs of blunt force impact
Latches show no signs of contact
Perpetrated from the inside
Casual misdeeds

Bottles strewn with empty glasses
Evidence galore
Christmas tree is snapped, now supine
Couch chair at confusing incline
Wasting roast potato passes
Solo on the floor

Shrouded dark in grown-up questions
Case remains unsolved
Pre-teen sherlocks are defeated
Unaware that help is needed
Claiming all adult transgressions
Guilelessly involved

Knowledge comes with maturation
Young gumshoe, take heart
Heavy is the comprehension
Adulthood in wise dimension
Toughest form of education
Living will impart

Trauma is by drink upstaged
Of subterfuge beware
Brace yourself for understanding
Bottle is a sly red herring
Denouement is disengaged
You won’t find it there

Life perspective is revealing
Sooner follow pain
Core of more investigation
Drink was only compensation
Obfuscating tricky healing
Alloyed with the leaden feeling
Undiscovered chain

You were just a fledgling hawkshaw
Grant yourself some grace
Rest the blame that you digested
Drop the anger you invested
Hopping off the guilt-rage seesaw
‘Case closed’ in its place

Sobriety is overrated
Bottle recess for your mind
Pain and time are complicated
Pain and mind are lubricated
Time and mind in competition
Time and pain aligned

Little drops of consolation
Shiny sparkly pools of bliss
Softly viewed through condensation
Revenants by invitation
Bottle-born in resurrection
Noone else to miss

There exists the true addiction
Passing time with those you lost
Pain is not the real affliction
Loss of love holds little friction
Time can pass in all directions
Overlook the cost

Bottles as chrono-transporter
Meaningless in time and pain
Chosen over bricks and mortar
Home inside the pain exporter
Caught inside the time remover
Genie trapped again

Traps are not a solo prison
Bottle is no picky thief
Locked outside your final mission
Circumscribed to watch and listen
Grasping as the brown glass darkens
Wading into grief