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

Those days when you just can’t wait to go to bed.
Not to slump down onto it in yielding surrender
or fall into it in tears, face first and meat red,
but to gently pull back the pillowy quilt
and the sheets, with tiny blue flowers,
flannelette, like a fresh work shirt,
so that when you slide in carefully
and make your cave in the sheets
the hug is work-arm strong
and reminds you of soil
and wheelbarrows
and gardening
and building
in the sun
as it sets…
and rises…
open eyes
still hugged,
you stand lightly
then soft pad to warm,
dark, sweet, pitch-bitter
coffee, and lifting the mug,
you pause before the first sip
of bliss, flooding deep in waking
flavours from magic beans grown
in ancient Ethiopian forests, noticed
by folk when curious goats turned zestful,
becoming a helper for evening prayer, to allow
hard work and intentional presence to earn well
your tiredness, so that you just can’t wait to go to bed…

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

Light replaced by smoke
Further obscures the statue
that white candle-glowed

Hazy, pearl-grey proof
that mystic transcendence is
not light-limited

Not just the statue
or the end of soft verses
or the white candle

It was the timing
The clear-felt coincidence
of pause and darkness

Caught in airy confluence
Secular becomes divine

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

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

Scars are enshrouded, contusions don’t show
Hidden the lesions, pretend to be grand
Feelingless furlough with barleycorn glow

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 won’t want to know
Sentiment-soaked more than she could withstand
Pour me another, to recess we go,
Feelingless furlough with barleycorn glow

Eventide had blushed listless. Its once slick pink lips chapped filmy white until faded darkness claimed the screen. Crouching shelf clouds growl. The distinction between cloud and breath is long lost.

Bedroom-jailed for pre-teen misdeeds, I break out to watch the sky. My slack-jawed shutter yawns wide enough for a grateful, lithe-graceful, exit. I land dully on dust-crusted, dinner roll earth, too dry to crunch. Each damp footfall collects another coating of soft, fine flour, congealing into ghostly pedicure foam. Outside is airless, closer than my detention. There is no freshing comfort here.

As the prescient cumulus towers, the earth and I expect. We are storm-primed, desperate for the great release. We sit torrent-wired, tongues out to taste the fat rain drops. Our tardy Robin Hood will come to steal the pressing moisture from the air and send it groundward. We are alert for his redistribution. His deeds will turn flour puffs to glueing paste, and free wheezing chests in sweet, wet, relief. Low thunder is our drumroll with intermittent cymbal crashes. We wait for the splashes in slick, fuggy, discomfort.

The earth is waiting to breathe, and so am I.

I step inside. The weight of past encounters shrinks the corridor. I brain-search for a safety behaviour to assuage the impending sense of doom. As if on a plane (‘count the seats between you, and your nearest exit’), I count the doorways between the entrance and my office as I walk forward.

Door one. Used all my leave days. Gone four weeks. Feels like much longer. Door two. Window ledges look unfamiliar. Doorhandles are strange. Door three. Was the carpet always this colour? Door four. The tight-wound wool ball in my chest clenches, the stretching yarn groaning like sailboat ropes in a north-westerly. Door five. I say chest, but to be specific, it’s the top of my sternum, bordering the jugular notch. Door six. The squeeze-groans are petulant reminders of why I went on leave. My omniscient manubrium warning call. Door seven. For the love of all that lives on God’s green earth, why are we back here?    

Why indeed. Door seven. Home base.

I sit at the desk and my mind crouches and crawls along the lonely, dark path. Back to the last time I was here. The last time I was hunted. Sludgy mud memories thickly bubble, burst, and liquefy before my eyes. So very thick and so very brown. Each pop a muted wet slap.

Then, another sound. From my computer. Just in front of me. I have an email.

My inner mud-bubble memory show responds. Now it scrolls through a parade of minor monsters. Possible email senders. My space and mind invaded by their correspondence. So very desperate and so very flawed in their attempts at functional adult interaction.

So very tantrum-primed, slander-keen, and gaslight-geared.

Mean-spilling, rage-channelling, drama-divers.
Breakdown one-uppers.
Accountability dodgers.
Monopolising guilt-trippers.

Lesser daemons.
Energy vampires.
Always thirsty.

This is where they hunt me. Door seven. My office. In emails, texts, calls, voicemails, and physical presence. High quality rendered. Dream reproduction ready. Technicolor.

To be fair, I’m top-grade prey. All squishy and caring. Softest-of-soft targets. The quintessential good listener. Ears for days. Psych-trained, chair-arranging, body language monitoring, tone-of-voice sensitive, feelings generator. Generous-portioned, silver-service dining. Tastes like sweet intentions, candied optimism, and bitter disappointment. Fear garnish for colour and crunch.

Now, I sit behind door seven. Waiting. Vibrating emotion...
I can feel them closing in…  

Please send instructions for establishing clear boundaries, guidelines for maintaining a mental distance, and chocolate.

Happy Halloween.

The beach in winter is my crying place
The shower will do
Sometimes the car
The tucked-away toilets at work
They are containers
But the beach is
My accomplice

We mourn together, weather gives us room
The wind assists, insists that others leave
If some resist, enlists the sand to
Reinforce the clear command with
Stinging pressure, stresser that the
Beach in winter is for us
And us alone
To sit
And safely grieve

Tim lived at five one two
Caraway Lane with a
dog and lawn that was
hard to maintain and three
goats with no names
Two bankers came
Crisply dressed, repossessed
Caraway lane

Paul had tried every trick
through thick and thin but he
couldn’t make rent when it
went on cheap gin and he
hated the taste
Fated to waste
Downing and drowning in
Crown-clouding gin

Richard was shy with an
acne-pocked charm and a
look of sick shock as he
watched in alarm as his
paycheck ran dry
Couldn’t tell why
Money tree entropy
ended supply

Tim was quite pretty, clown
-witty and warm with flash
city-smoked glints and fresh
country-stoked draw, with his
cheekbones and jaw, and the
charm he had, strapping lad
dressed in plaid shirts he would
flirt with short skirts or a
dress or long pants, really
anything worked

Paul was quite petty, and
yet he had steady ad
-mirers in heady and heal
-y-tripped love, he was
shunned by wronged songbirds, he’d
stolen their sweet words, his
perfect pitch, descant-rich
Transcendent vocally
Elegant poetry
Angel-conferred

Richard had first-degree
Self-esteem vacancy
So, on occasion he
Self-critiqued shamefully
Good for perfectionist
standards which nurtured his
six-string-chord skilfulness
Master accompanist
Metronome rhythm-prone
strong instrumentalist

Each in a fix when a
-lone but the mix would be
known to eclipse what was
shown on the local bar
circuit you’d know if you
heard it, a joy to un
-earth it, so worth it e
-merged as the trio with
alchemy, beauty and
blasphemy, moral and
mortal-tinged humour a
-cademy, heaven-sent
harmony, rather be
here to see, them than be
anywhere actually
this is me, heavily
suddenly, readily
falling in love with three
men in one melody

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

Your cruel words are cursory
Mean less than null to me

Don’t need a PhD
Learnt more in nursery

Sweet song of ‘helping me’
No more than sophistry

Pick out the forgery
Lies with no artistry

Flowing in, eyeless grin
Sugary medicine

Gaslighting, infighting
Snarl under strobe-lighting

Saccharine blathering
Indolent flattering

Backhanded compliments
Heard without inner sense

I reject totally
Self-slighting sorcery

Callous affrontery
Bankrupting bursary

I have observed more
Preserved more

Have learned more
Deserve more

Have value
Don't argue

Can trust me
I must be

Enough being
just, me

So hear me,
my dear me,
coz now we agree

I am worthy

Mimosa pudica retreat
Humid glasshouse, rainy day
Pane-separated from the world
Exhaling foggy vagueness
Colours run wet
World through window walls,
a distorted Monet reproduction
Morphing, mixing, mushy
Each canvas exists for a sliding second
Glass and breath
Collaborating through condensation
Our fuzzy-haze masterwork

Panoramic gossamer lens
Magically softens
spiky, scratchy, sharp, crispness
into a smudgy simulacrum
A kind deceit
Frowns, scowls, growls,
and bared-toothy rage,
all smeared
Gently redacted
Calm, dreamy, pillowscape broadcast
Impressionist buffer
In muted pastels

Reality in artful disguise
Remoulded for ease of consumption
Sugary spoonful of subterfuge
Sifting, sorting, selective
Incomplete and fragmentary
Blur-clouded brain-break
Intermittent extra distance
Breath-focused,
soupy-warm,
momentary masterpiece
Just for me
Until my leaves unfurl

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

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

No need for shallow chest breath
I am safe
I can breathe through my belly
Deep, becoming regular
Soothing, smoothing, slowing

No need for organised thought
I am shielded
I can relax into this place
Calm, becoming gentle
Softening, swaying, sliding

No need for clock watching
Dali time only
I can exist, chrono-sheltered
Now, becoming ageless  
Melting, muting, morphing
Here…

A door with round window
Mellowing to Renoir-lens
Glossy, smudgy, charm
Hobbit-style architecture
Familiar, shire-y, amiable
Lit warm and soft

A brown carpet bag
Caressing the rich pile
Sturdy, salvaged, true
Tardis-like inner structure
Dependable holder, infinite
For weights and woe

Smooth, even, stone stairs
Descending in timeworn strength
Secure, bendless, cool
Delivering, guiding journey-way
To ease and mend

I tender-lift my bag
Zip open for a prize
On every step

Each stair a healing game
The bag a hungry friend
To hold my heavy goods
And bare them strong for me
As I descend

Step one is for fear
Two for screaming
Three for ache
    with blurred-out meaning
Four for panic
Five dark-dread
    that slither-twists through sleep in bed
If guilt is six
Then shame is seven
    long blame-soaked school without a lesson
Eight for pleading
Nine for weeping
Ten for wounds, and burns, and bleeding

The bag now zipped, trapped weights and woe,
is set down gently, as I go
All grateful heart, and kindess-eyed
Door opens as
I walk outside

A single gull in turbulence soars strange
Beach wind-groans whipping sand to concrete hail
In mute fatigue, the blue-grey sky submits
Obedient to winter’s shore-lashed slap
Until pacific breezy balms prevail

Across the roadway suburbs roost on dunes
Dry salt-sand soils, poor beds for cottage plants
Post sand-blast rain provides a rare life-drink
Wet softens crunchy grasses wielding burrs
Now possible their jaunty wind-bend dance

Three weeks have lapsed since breath was morphed to talk
Your silence cuts - ice words would waste chill air
I huddle under muddled blankets shield
To hide-sleep travel time to spend the day
No warmth in lonely waking waiting there

This chatless treatment, stony, icy hush
Sound muffles as a newly fallen snow
In quiet, distant cool is bitter fierce
Cold time a sorry echo of disdain
As timid clock dull thud-ticks glacial slow

New sound returns thawed tempers given days
Shy cautious in first breaths, as blue-grey sky
Out-waits the stinging punishment in sand
Outstretched the quaking warmness-seeking hand
As spring comes melting frost to snug and dry

Sometimes we must move
Not shallow gym class work-mimicry
Empty choreography
Planned, timed, synchronised
Movement the purpose, fitness the goal
or health, or presentation
Important, worthy, needed
and yet, a slight, simplistic facsimile
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
Not gentle-stroll-incidental, ancillary activity
Perfect temperature
Sweat-less, shiver-less, comfortable
Sunshine the purpose, restoration the goal
or biophilia, or head-clearing
Cleansing, uplifting, lovely
and yet, orthogonal to the experience
of really moving

Sometimes we must move
For more than moving’s sake
Sincere reverberations
Changing, morphing, building
Action the purpose, elevation the goal
or processing, or releasing
Cathartic, detoxing, rejuvenating
in a way that leaves our world
different than before
we moved

When danger seems a looming steady state
Embrace the energy to scream and run
and channel into moving through the fear
Transmute to new found strength to persevere
To body-work at peak ‘til job is done

To push and pull, to dig, haul up, and scrub
Yield recompense for sweat and pulsing nerves
The world a little better than before
Clearer, cleaner, cared for, kept, and more
And you all terror-spent and panic-purged

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.

Ever wished for a getaway?
Silent, solo, one-way vacay?
Happy, humanity holiday?
No-folk, lone-boat hideaway?

Do you drown in a roomful?
Or sag from a spoonful?
Is a mutter a mouthful?
Or a minute a moonful?

Or possibly next door
Is too near to hope for
Just presence impending
Is chthonic, light-ending

When speaking is deafening
Conversing, head-hefting
Add talkers together,
More sound than a blender

Shrill shouting and yelling
All brain and ear-bending
Wailing and waterworks
More blasting than fireworks

Even when voice-mute
Their feelings still noise-shoot
They sing and scream
Or **** and steam

Leave you battered
Dry-tattered
All flaking and scattered
Slight sheets float dust-shattered

Disintegrating on contact
Obliterating the contract
All social rules are in retract
Safety exits are abstract

Unbeatable, unkillable  
Invincible, divisible
Not fast or irresistible,
I choose to be invisible

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?

Colour-coded lists
with satisfying check marks
Tally for self-worth score
Free time is a dead wasteland
Work compulsion conquers all

Work is my saviour
Proof that I have use
Grateful for the gift
of structured daily toil

I don’t need a break
I am far too strong
I am made to stand
in any roaring storm

Endlessly on point
I cannot relax
Maybe I should take
a class in calming down

Another degree
Major in stillness
Minor in poems,
music, walks and gardens

What happens to me
While I do ‘leisure’?
What will I be worth
when I take time for me?

When days are rough at work, and heat is high
My self-esteem is carried by a role
To prove each working day that I am fine
And value comes from actions to assist
At frantic pace that slowly dents my soul

Beware when job and self strong-overlap
Identity is blank beyond my job
Then molehills swell to snowy mountain range
Allotments to sheep stations in my mind
And working day and night a sleeve-worn slog

Befogged in role, befuddled in self-worth
In muddled shame, obscured by guilt and fear
With added slow fatigue and hopelessness
And where do your needs end, and mine begin?
All rules of world and life become unclear

Learn to take time off
Negotiate with myself
New type of self-worth
Creative time, open field
Discovery nurtures all

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-