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

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

Standing wild-violet-timid in careful shoes, I collapse into Monday.

My internal weather is spiky with low-level nausea. Brain fog, mind-cloudy at first, with a high chance of precipitation across the afternoon. Externally, the settling cold front will bring morning squalls before a high-pressure system arrives in the early evening.

Difficult to know what shoes are needed  
for this day, this time,

let alone what armour, masks, and steel
with this climate, this energy...

Hard to predict what will be stored in memory
by this mind, this brain...

This questionable,
yet seldom questioned,
recording of events,
from my flawed perspective only...

Should I attempt to trust myself today?
The answer neither clear nor confident
Instant reflex shoulder shrug
With gaze-avoiding fizzy nerves
A patent hint that I may be
    a trifle less than competent

What lens will shape my history today?
And will it light me kindly or in glare?
When my parts construct the story
Hope they break it to me gently
But I know that my track record
    not-so-subtle hints beware
  
If my brain detects a glimpse of faults or glimmers of malfeasance,
it will use these torts to make the case that I deserve all grievance
from a host of inner parties with a wavering allegiance
the impedance to agreeance is a tendence to vehemence, so

How will I use the playback from today?
I could use it well in kindness or in pain
With the re-runs stealing airtime
From productive contemplation
I could use it as more proof that
    I should not have trust again…

Tomorrow, I will wear my security boots, with stronghold socks.

I never knew about
The inert filler that
Improves the qualities
Of the concrete anchor

I hardly thought about
The thick filaments that
Increase the tensile strength
Of the synthetic rope

I didn’t care about
The galvanising that
Protects the mild steel
Of the Eye Bolt Head

   Fabricated weighted-strong,
   For time of tribulation
   Steady, ready, learning-long
   For heavy education

   Vital use in stormy flash
   For fear of wave-washed going
   Murky lessons foamy crash
   Tough-moored for gale-smash knowing
  
   Solid, loaded, hefty force
   Surge-squall saviour, tempest keep
   Any storm will blow its course
   Even so, still draws us deep

   In calmer times the sinker line
   Anchor-bound and concrete-lagged
   Will tether us in place and time
   Hinder-hitched and progress-dragged

I no longer need it
My concrete anchor that
Saved the young child
Who weathered the storm

She awkward steps back kitchen-side
This pan-lapsed food-fond alchemist
To where her latent joys reside
In flavour-labours sanctified
    Through boils, in bakes, on roasting
Her last cooked dinner, holiday
Before her dear one took their leave
Too painful kitchen-time replay
So, pots and mixers stored away
    Lost joy of home-heart toasting

Now humming with slight body quake
Full fear of fast descent in tears
Yet realising the heady ache
Was no impending weep-long lake
    But simple mess frustration
In truth the galley, clean enough
But who put all her tools away?
No soldier knife line, shining tough
No pin for shortcrust, brush for puff
    No decorating station

Crisp tuts for every tool misplaced
With tiny sighing shoulder arch
Utensils that could not be traced
Like grieving that could not be faced
    Rough substitute located
While losing whisk, sieve, spoon, and knife
With larger pieces from her past
In working through small kitchen strife
She found her hiding zest for life
    In crusty pastry braided
    Joy-cooking reinstated

In beatific dappling
Beyond the broken light
A prism - one or multitudes
- create joy-magic scattering
As colours spill from white

The bliss-veiled happy vandals
Ice crystals, dusty mist,
or fresh-shed brick-metallic blood
Immune from birthright scandals
Guerilla-art eclipsed

What hidden mystic sorcery
This trigger transformation
Our daily glimpse at heaven hints
A blood and light-mixed chemistry
With dust-transmuted artistry
Charmed glimmer transformation

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

A sheltered microcosm saved in greys
Abandoned tennis courts behind the shed
Discarded sports cap melty-crinkle sighs
Dark bitumen to amplify the heat
And any sorry hurt that worry-bled

A stomachful of fluffy food forgot
Lone lunchbox waiting courtside for its turn
Now wasting as the cracking plastic tells
Of ground more breakfast than of tennis fit
To fry the egg, then desiccate and burn

Sardonic jesters loudly quiet call
How far away is cool, and further still
Acerbic head on mordant shoulders rests
As pair of caustic, bitter lips impart
The ugliest corrosive acid swill

Sark-wolves emboldened shrinking of their prey
How close is sheepish shame, and closer yet
Apologetic hair, repentant shoes
New fascinating laces, aglets lost
Shy socks serve not to aid, but to abet

Dear deprecants, embrace your rueful flush
Let bashful gloves be padded by this truth
The catch-calls curse less caustic on your soles
Electron-pairs now balanced in their roles
Basic strong since graduating youth

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

Corporate world transformation ambition
New definition in team composition
Once human agents now robot cognition
Enter the post-human workforce transition

Efficiency skyrockets
Low people, high profits  

Delivery, optimized
Retailers, digitized
Dialogue, personalized

Despite hefty savings in stress leave and tissues
The droid revolution is riddled with issues

Compassionless robots corrode
Human relations are slowed

People speak less
Smile less
Trust less…

Science boffins add humanoid humour
and vulnerability augments compatibility
within hybrid social systems

Sentiment sub-routines
avoid awkwardness and
tame transitions

Androids are made more like humans

People-only is ended
Social systems are blended
Human feelings transcended
Workforce entry amended

Now proficient production
is intermittently interrupted
by androids leaking feelings

Patched up too many times
Spare parts are sparse
Units are on their non-figurative
last legs, arms, and heads

Management resists re-investment in the
replaceable, robotic working class

Sad androids stand stranded,
disbanded, drab-handed,
slam-hanged and harangued,
despoiled and destroyed…

To delegate feelings to mechanoid beings
Is fast guaranteeing the absence of meaning

To swap warm emotion for chilly devotion
brings human implosion and moral erosion

Closed system, no weak points
All software, no souls
Is almost as useless as sieves with no holes
Or icing, no cake

For every mistake
ends with a correction
through error detection
Inspection, reflection
And causal connection
That causes protection
and growing conviction
that this is a fiction,
which feeds a new faction
for human affection…

The commerce machine is for people, however,
One person alone can be wrong, but together
The networks of pet-quirks and step-shirks and blunders
Make slipping and lapsing and rending asunder
No wonder the funders are foible-free hunters

To engineer-out human error
The fewer the humans the better

But work is a meaningful human endeavour

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.

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

Last night I dreamt in body, not in mind
No images or sounds remained at wake
Left only with the remnants of a hug
Warm gift to me from longtime missing shade
To leave me love, then reconvey to grave

Last night I dreamt in washing, not in sense
A cooling rain that left me pink and clean
Of soaking drops that ran on face and limb
And drying cloth that softly followed rain
Fresh for the world to leave its dirt again

Last night I dreamt in campfire warmth and milk
Puff-swirling clouds hope-floated me in silk
In wrapping blankets, cuddled me with care
In loving presence lifting me like air
With messages from those no longer here
To spend the dark and morning disappear

Drenched in feeling
Eyes drink the landscape

I could swear that each colour was
emotion-tinted
sorrow-toned
anguish-textured

How many stretched hours of living
made each heavy brush-scar?

What volume of rinsing tears
for each change of shade?

Why did the artist know instinctively that the people
were so small
in such a vast, pigment-thick world?

From this distance they feel like children
But I know that they are grown
At least on the outside

Agony
and aesthetics
amalgamate in
assembled alchemy

Are these thoughts
artist-intentioned
landscapist-birthed
painter-engineere­d?

Or are they my thoughts
reflected
by brush strokes?

Designed to elicit, not instruct
To return, not to teach
To cast-back, not to create

This open canvas
in muddy colours

A perfect, terrible mirror
Helping me gently
in my now softened
sadness

It starts with a single, tiny stone scratch-sliding down the *****. Brushes bare ankle on its way. Hardly noticed. Just as the thought occurs, probably should have worn boots, another stone mobilises.

Strange how the surface seems frictionless
Riding a waterslide

Curious how the naked path is so deeply cracked
Eczema patches, too much scratching

Odd that I never noticed how few the trees, and how they lean
Closing time, bar patrons, a shandy too far

Noise
Faintly
A rumble
Weak, indistinct
Presence stretching out
Slow, creeping expansion

Too late to mourn the forest, to miss the bushes
Delinquent regret for excavation, loading, and drawdown
Belated response to subterranean erosion, to shrink and swell weathering

Disgusted, the mountain growls, cries, and vomits. Reluctant, mutually assured destruction. Extended lead-up. Consequences still seem sudden and shocking. We are left to evacuate the path. We wait out the flow with dull-witted clocks marking painful hours. Our forced-stolid vigil.

But we keep growing. Becoming wise, vigilant, enlightened.
Until we can rebuild and reclaim.

When earth down-travels vertical and quick
The warning signs obscured in cheap disguise
Debris and mud flow hourglass in sheets
With soil and rock foundation lost in creep
And gravity is winning every prize

Fast-follow hasty flee to safe retreat
Reflecting deeply causes us to learn
With careful pause and kindly shared support
The hurt recedes, now making room for thought
Until clear-sighted, wiser, we return

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

Tiny blossoms draw me in
Delicate in perfect scale
Hardly seen by giant eyes
Missed by stumbly mighty shoes
Little shall prevail

Background sense of fizzy buzz
Enigmatic magick thrum
Static sizzles raising hairs
Micro-sign betrays the veil
Small and subtle hum

Clumsy mushrooms doff their caps
Grass lies dying in-the-round
Ring enough to stand inside
Close my eyes and feel my feet
Joining with the ground

Breathe for minutes, feels like days
Darkly waiting for my guide
Thinking wistful mystic thoughts
Planning my occult debut
Earth and sense defied

Open-eyed defeat at last
Ignorance in plain reveal
Ordinary, earthly lawn
Firm and usual human feet
Awkward, sheepish feel

Later realisation nags
Shameful steps abashed retrace
Ground was flat no mound or stones…
Certainly not ring or fort…
Go back, just in case

--
Persistent mystic optimism
Must be otherworldly born
Keeps the searchers looking loudly
Grass a supernatural bounty
Mushrooms astral signpost proudly
Undermined but not forlorn

Tenacious esotericism
Keeps the shadow veil in place
Constant proof that all’s mundane
Earthly reinforcement game
Unsuspecting fleshly frame
Bathed in psychic grace

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

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-

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?