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.

Nightly whiskey flow
stains a white-walled childhood home
Parents seem blurry
Love and danger co-occur
Paroxysms of anger

In childhood there’s no room for shades of grey
It’s black or white, confusion sits unused
A place for everything and each in place
And I am in control and thus to blame
Come adulthood to show me I’m confused

So, consequences passed down like a gift
In genes and in behaviours left unchecked
To witness fights, hard falls, deep burns, and pain
The trauma transfer, second-hand ingrained
With love and anger, care and dark neglect

Then later roughly realise there was wrong
The blend of wrong and love is hard to hold
Most often see the child who fails at school
With low self-concept, guilt, hot shame, and fear
But all built strength and power left untold

Compensatory
change for homeostasis
Strong roles adopted
Scars deftly hidden
Chaos-order alchemy

I must be The Responsible One
Parentification at maximum pitch
A list-making, chore-running, stable-housemaster
A self-worth creator from jobs neatly done
All leisure-time wary and leadership-rich

I must be The Adjuster as well
Will follow directions and bounce from extremes
A dime-spinning, change-juggling, fresh puddle-jumper
Surprise and emergency make me excel
More calm at the edges than flat in-betweens

I must be The Calming Placater
Maintaining still waters whatever my price
A vigilant, change sensing, smoothing class helper
To people-please acts as a guilt-shame assuager
All pliable, social, and overly nice

Imperfect but strong
coping mechanisms forged
Power in order
Capable, dependable
Psyche shaped by survival

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

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

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

Betwixt the cloud and rain
Lies more than empty sky
Life’s clumsy saga built
As bumping, joining drops
Condense around discreet
Impure or dusty nuclei

Between the day and night
Soft rose light smattering
Romantic goodnight kiss
To mix pink more with white
Unseen pollutants dance
In shorter wavelength scattering

From birth to adulthood
When kind compassion blooms
The road of dusty harms
Full humanness in-bud
With suffering and pain
An alchemy of timeworn wounds

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

--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--

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

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

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

Better to be taciturn
Than babble through a tacky turn
And fail to hear enough to learn
In common conversation

Others may proclaim you shy
Or timid, mousy, terrified
Resist the urge to justify
Your ramble regulation

It doesn’t make you weak or mute
To take a minute to compute
A thought before you contribute
May optimise your speaking

Pause won’t hurt your cause unless
Your words are just a game of chess
To press, suppress, or to impress
Correcting or critiquing

Do you desire a partnership?
A sharing, caring, airing?

Or more of a dictator-grip?
A snaring, scaring, blaring?

Maybe you are silence-scared
Uncomfortable with empty air
And feel it is your job to bare
The sound continuation

Worry not my helpful friend
Your heavy duty at an end
More useful with an ear to lend
       Look kind toward the taciturn
       You may yet find a lot to learn
With still consideration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

< I >
Day arc begins. The sunflower class gazes lovingly skyward at their fire-star teacher. The newest pupils chin-strain in awe-focused attention. Reverent but energetic, their heads smooth-turn gradually westward towards their warm reward. Their blooms are a balmy destination for sunning bees. Perfect timing, rippling into the world…  

A sage watched his plants while his plants tracked the sun
He thought that it wasn’t worth noting
that petals would right to keep facing the light
as the sun-facing side was selectively dried

So sagely inquiry was done
Until the idea could receive its refloating

A physical botanist noticed the same
He took it a logic step further
His plants were all placed and completely encased
in a darkness-bound dock for a turn of the clock

The plants kept rotating their aim
And he was the first timing rhythm observer

The more he considered, the more he was sure
He could, based on solid deduction,
with confidence say that they acted this way
Through an inner intense, sunlight following sense

And urged folks to study this more
With rigours of research and science instruction

Years later, two scientists lived in a cave
A one-month foray in spelunking
Still, noiseless and lightless, the cave was all timeless
Just like the plant dock, but encased in cave rock

Their temperature curves did not change
So humans and plants had some notes to exchange…
--

< II >
People invent fake sunlight. Industry never stops. A timeless, tiring blur of day into night. We sit, pale and caffeinated. A world blinking fluorescent and midnight grey. A modern, diurnal nightmare. Timing battles fought from the inside…

Perched aside the optic nerve
Perfect clock inside the brain
Captured sunlight through the eye
Keeps us synched to night and day
Time and time again

Crossing zones will lead to lags
Clock and earth fall out of step
Difficult to sleep or wake
Model it to count the cost
Measured sleeping debt

Scientists find many clocks
Timing marked out body-wide
Liver, kidney, stomach, skin
Hair and muscle, pancreas
All with clocks inside

Timing cues from inside out
Hormones and adrenal glands
Exercise, consuming food
Drinking, sleeping, changing mood
Moving clockwork hands

    It’s tricky, said the shiftworker
    I’m in a real to-do
    My stomach thinks it’s ten am, my liver, half past two
    My kidneys think it’s yesterday
    My muscles Monday night
    My brain in concert with the earth, keeps timing by the light
    And all I want is sugar and a quiet kiss goodnight

Stomach, head, and heart in flux
Health and safety chrono-shock
Out of synch with social norms
Shiftworkers are precious hands
Pulled around-the-clock

Invisible clocks set with sun-travel springs
A hidden existence in all living things

Travel free my inner scapegoat
You’re liberated, off this hook
No more shame-horned
Guilt-stomached dread,
       scarce enough to wrong-bare
Not startle-sneezed or tremble-shook

I excise redundant remnants
Bad wattle glands where crime hangs large
Not Billie-blame,
Nanny-regret
       or just a wrongless kid
No fair-trial felon, biased charge

Imagine dropping heavy torts
The solid clunk as fault hits floor
Past carried light
Kind compassion
       wide enough to weight-bare
Rich mixed plant pasture evermore
An end to serveless inner war

We ask wild feats of writers
Unselfish word-bleeders
For work that is numinous
Words for joy, laughs, and weeping
Us hungry feel-feeders
Eat verses voluminous

We absorb works in moments
They divest force in phrase
Emotion frames numerous
Words for light, love, and darkness
Channels hours and days
Air-weightless and luminous

We call comedy writers
Carefully humorous
Use joking for distance
Words for howls, roars, and giggles
Sweet-flavours existence
From bitters that ruin us

We challenge dear writers
To capture the cumulous
Joyful, enlightening
Words for life, growth, and knowledge
Anxious, heart-tightening
Funny or humourless
Instructions in humanness

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

Malicious hearts will hurt the empath
As summer hurts the winter shore
Eroding buffers until burnout
Kind retreat, the only cure
--

End-of-summer beach
Seabirds’ shaky screech
Grey gulls too full to cry
Bin chooks too fat to fly
Sorry shoreline
Systems offline
Foot pounded
Rebounded
Flattened…
Shrub ripped
Wing clipped
Sand-******
Grass plucked
Party bruised
Cocktail-cruised
Cans on conches
Fish unconscious
Foam and flotsam
Wave-blind coxon
Soda can crab shacks
Neon pink algae tracks
Whelk shell graveyard
Absent lifeguard
**** platoons
Naked dunes
Cheapened
Weakened
Exposed…
Tidal hangover
Coastal leftover
Erosion potluck
Sitting sea-duck
Strong incoming storm surge
Winter solstice land purge
Quick and shifty beach thieves
Cyclone tempest mouth-breathes
Recalcitrant brackish aggressor
Intransigent briny transgressor
Suspensions of sediments modified
Walling and breakwaters compromised
Over, back, and whitewash makers
Bubble, rubble, boil and breakers
Weathered, not weathering
Tempered, not tempering
More block than gavel
More grave than gravel
All prisoner no guard
Grain short of a shard
Receding sand-line drift
Intensive shoreface-lift
Patient unresponsive
Highly hypertensive
Code cerulean blue…
Plant encouragement
Shoreline nourishment
Sand transplant
Grass implant
Healing hiatus
to homeostasis
Swell subsiding
King Tide presiding
Prince Neap succeeds
Warm court accedes
Managed realignment
Sanctuary assignment
Steadfast protections
Timid reconnections
Gentle, careful, soft,
and slow…
  A new beach visitor
  dips their toe

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

Why do we carry this language of blame
Describing our keys to survival?
Subsist and survive are not really the same
The latter complexion, more skin in the game
Not best-life but rest-life deprival

How can we cope in inflexible ways
When bad comes with real consequences?
Surely attaining more subsequent days
Shows that our coping is worthy of praise
Extended, effective defences

When can we grant ourselves residency
With normal societal backing?
Without the heretical hesitancy
But carrying coping more elegantly
Set free from self-tackling attacking

       Can we retell our histories
       Including the victories
       Earned by our damaged main actor?
       Are social consistencies
       Issuing injuries
       Skipping the benefit-factor?

Behaviours may surface inexorably
No use in my current rendition
But very successful in rescuing me
And thus, I will carry them generously
Admit that I needed them desperately
       But not in my present condition
Release them with grateful permission

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

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

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

Judging my safety
Like collapsing sandcastles
Rough-built at high tide

Feeble foundations
Based on assumptions
Freak waves waiting

Only recently
I learnt that not everyone
Always feels afraid

Turn gently inward
To ask whether I’m okay
Quietly observe

The body holds the answers
Truer than the pliant mind

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

I was trapped, but
as noisy-quick triggers burn
adult options wait, smoke-obscured

Now I have agency

I was naïve, but
as searing-shame echoes blush
tenure-chastened growth sprouts verdant

Now I have wisdom

I was wounded, but
as oily black trauma smears
injure-blemished skin heals tougher

Now I have scars

I was confused, but
as guileless young stories waste
lesson-laden tales are woven

Now I have clarity

I was in danger, but
as painful new learnings flow
hard-won armour fends when needed

Now I have shielding

I can decide,
and I know
I am strong
in clear-eyed
protection

I am grown

The weekend sprinted past without acknowledgement. More time travel than sleep. Feels like I never left this desk. Did I go outside? Sunlight is a forgotten fancy. Everything buzzes in artificial, mercury-vapour gas-discharge, office white.

Strong coffee, mouth-only smile, and emergency chocolate at-the-ready.

Digital calendar fairy sweeps her wand - plink.
Upcoming meeting onset.
Wince.
Nearly go-time.
Deep breath.
I need help.
Close my eyes and consider my options.

In silent prayer, I call on my battle-allies. My conflict squad for the tiny, inconsequential campaigns that are laid out before me, scheduled neatly in 30-minute increments.

Sarcastic skirmishes with witless weapons. Budgetary disbursement battlegrounds, each heralded by a twinkly bright plink. Officious double agents and grinning traitors. Good sense and basic decency defeated ad nauseam.

Inwardly, I flick through my mental deck of cards. Mythic personality avatars. Figurative and emblematic. Mostly trusted, often helpful allies and collaborators. My squad. Grown over years. Battle-honed when the stakes were substantially higher.

Nine of Swords, Nymph Aegina
Scared and small. Of water and steel
Daughter of rivers
Mistrust, despair
Reduce, retreat, conceal

Queen of Swords, Pallas Athena
Warriors and winter. Shrewd and tough
Strength and judgement
Challenge, compel
Defeat, critique, rebuff

King of Cups, Charles the Great
Gifted and keen. Springtime and fire
Patron of culture
Consider, rethink
Exhort, create, inspire

Five of Wands, keening Achos
Dust and torment. Deep distress
Bringer of weeping
Commend, lament
Regret, bewail, profess

Queen of Wands, Lady of Lorien
Fearless and brave. Of summer and tree  
Wielder of Light
Perform, protect
Assert, direct, decree

I select our Lady, knowing that Aegina and Achos may vie for a cameo.
Channelling my Queen of Wands,
I arrange my face
and await the knock at the door.

Mental round-about
Self-esteem see-saw
Innocent web search
‘Change core beliefs from childhood’
Google tells me it’s child’s play

---

Welcome to the rest of your life
The best of your life, your best of your life
You are the author of your story
Around the metaphorical turn,
along the symbolic path, up the figurative stairs,
you open your catachrestic mute eyes and deaf heart
You are smarter, stronger, sightlier
Socially appropriate, admissible, acceptable
You have worth, hold worth, make worth

Choose something new to believe in
Start today, heart today
Chart your way, heart your way
Treat your limiting beliefs like thoughts
Write your belief-thoughts down
Be honest - no cheating
You can’t fool your brain, so retool your brain
Today’s lies make tomorrow’s whys
Use your neuroplastic, elastic, synaptic
retroactive, augmentative, cross-cognitive,  
meta-thinking for better thinking

Renew reckoned resilience
Never say ‘no’ to anything again
Bent grass that always bounces back
Elephants, drought, and weeds
Fugacious clouds in your sky
Master of no-limit living

You can cope with anything, everything,
all things, unlimited
(uncurbed, unchecked, unreasonable)
You can do it, all up to you
(Your responsibility, burden, fault)
Coping, thriving, ruling
(Your “no-one-should-have-to-live-like-this” life)

---

Romanticised view
Of self-thought-work road
Not slides and swing sets
But stepping slowly daily
A journey in compassion

Clear, kindly limits
Held for shared welfare
Outside-trap living
Not shiny, crafty life-drain
Growing into wiser eyes

The powerful man
Pitchfork-armed, chasing the girl
Tine-first, ready to strike

She is today’s unfortunate rage object
Hapless, wrongless victim
Weaponless, shieldless casualty

He is blind privilege righteous
Incandescent from his
latest, baseless, graceless
gotcha!

Forehead veins pulse sickly blue-green
Gas giant magnitude pupils
Each aperture an onyx void
Irony in sympathetic nervous system arousal

If he can wound her
– really break her,
he will quiet that feeling
The one that creeps and gnaws
Whisper screaming
Especially at night

Impossible conscience
Poor Jiminy Cricket
Eyes sticky with tears
Best efforts in vain

How do we retain compassion?
Scaffold empathy?
Bolster sanity?
While absorbing the violence
Of the man who flattens his beer cans
   with a hydraulic pancake car crusher
who cuts his delicate finger sandwiches
   with a restored 1790s guillotine
who sets his table
   with longsword steak knives
   and matching pitchforks
   a set, for special occasions

Vast energy required to remain soft
When distant and diamond hard
Is the path of no resistance

All this energy
Feels wasted
Why can’t we collect it?
Battery store it?
Pitchfork narcissist anode
Empath cathode
Could power a city
Energy crisis solved

Country nighttime turned off the world
Absolute window blacking
Any other life void-invisible
Universe shrunk snack-size
Existence is only this cab,
these tiny lights,
this fuzzing radio
One direction
Only ahead
Only these tracks

A change in rhythm signals new territory
Lower infrastructure spend
Budget acknowledged by
transitioning drum track
More toms
Double kick
More bass, but
no less hypnotising, no less soporific, no less slowing, no less…

Snap.
Driver vigilance alarm earns its keep
Pierced by safety sound needles
Bleary eyes split open
Only closed for seconds
Enough to dry 3am eyelash glue
Intermittent, intensifying battle
Open versus closed
Here versus where
Wake versus yawning, rocking, mesmerising, irresistible…

Snap.
Assistance required
Scan for options
Snoozing thermos drools its last drips onto the floor mat
Moment of silence for coffee, our absent friend
What else?
Lunch box offers carrot sticks
Sharp, crisp, smug
No help. What else? Cake.
A silent bargain
– okay calories, we’ve had our differences, but we need to pull together
Health is tomorrow, safety is now

Sleepiness shrinks and stretches place and time
There is only here
Only now
Battle and bargains
Winning and losing
Until the sun comes up

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

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.

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

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

Put your burdens down, right here
Not forever, just for now

Let them know you hear their cries
See the blues under their eyes

Tell them there’s no need to fear
You’ll return to mop their brow

‘Til their tears are running clear


They’ll be waiting low, right here
Biding silent, softly weep

Strike a bargain, leave in trust
Then before they gather dust

Greet them as you reappear
Warm them gently in your keep

Carry kinder, hale and just


You have earned your journey pause
Try to graciously ignore

Any loud imagining
That you could be squandering

Chances that are there because
You are shrugging ache and sore

In your weighted wandering


It’s alright to take a break
Not forever, just for now

You are burden-carry strong
Muscles steel and journey long

Listen to your body ache
Needs a rest, if you allow

‘Til your steady ache is gone

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

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

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

Don’t worry yourself, purrs Negative Voice
I'm telling you this to protect you
No lead in your pencil
So pointless in fact
No person of worth would respect you

    Dear Negative Voice,
       I see what you mean
       But just a brief point for reflection
       I’m not sure I’m really an absolute waste
       Consider some minor correction?

It’s better for you, coos Negative Voice
To know that you’re practically useless
No rain in your storm cloud
So juiceless in fact
You’re toothless, inept, and excuseless

    Dear Negative Voice,
       A stirring reply
       Is this in totality truthful?
       I’m sure my ineptitude has measured bounds
       And even just sometimes, I’m useful

The beauty of living this version of truth
Is, you are at maximum harm
Nothing they’re possibly saying to you
Will add to your sense of alarm

Providing agreement to monster-y ones
Might also afford added aid
Appeasing and easing an excessive ego
May downgrade a wailing cascade

    Dear Negative Voice,
       Deep thanks for your thoughts
       A note of some gentle resistance
           I notice I’m having the thought that I’m worthless
           Historically helpful, but now with no purpose
       Distinct in my voice, yours holds limited purchase    
       So now I can give you some distance
           I humbly suggest
           This grateful request
       For inner, more peaceful existence