A carpenter touches me,
  feels length and texture,
    adjusts to perfect fit,
      varnishes till I glow
        with polished pride.

Aristocratic fists
  use my glossy guide rail
    to find their champagne boxes.
      They listen in patchouli perfumed privacy
        while I hear only distant chords
          of an unseen opera.

When the lifts fail
  bent arthritic fingers grasp
    and haul old bodies
      grumbling and groaning,
        step by step,
          to the circle.

But my favourites are the sticky paws
  of children ******* sweets
    hurrying to the pantomime;
      in their haste
        they leave a tacky sucrose veneer
          on my glassy lacquer.
        
          My sugar coating lasts
      until the complaining cleaners
    reset the theatre
for tomorrow.

An oyster’s grit accumulating
new layers of aragonite
and calcite, contributing, plating
the growing bright translucent white
and crystalizing hard, pellucid
wan pearl – that forms within the mucid
molluscan slimy dank inside –
a creamy gem is calcified.

Diaphanous and lustrous jewel
or septic and necrotic stone
that’s like a canker which has grown
into an opulent fat spherule?
A pearl forms round a piece of grit,
my childhood at the heart of it.

Pale pink petals dipped in blood
surround my yellow crown
  and painstakingly painted stigmata.
A  fragile, fragrant DNA poem
  perfectly expressed.
An immaculate lily – not a failed rose.

His hands encompass: pulling me from dirt
my terracotta wetness coats his palms
infusing nails and joints with ochre clay.
A ball of damp adobe, thunk, I’m thrown,
the wheel begins its spin, his fingers grasp
irregular alluvium, I'm smoothed
as digits delve into my focal point
their pressure firmly moulding, shaping me
into a vase, a ***, a water jug
to be what his imagination holds.

Underneath the thorn
  stinking, **** suppurates.

It throbs–
pulling the splinter–
  pressing out the ****–
      squeezing until the green sepsis runs ******.

The thorn's scar
      is permanent
            biding time,
                  waiting for bacteria.

It's not easy to wash feet
    in Messulumi.
Water fetched
    fire lit
          kettle boiled
              warm water poured
                    soap rubbed
rough towel dried.
Such care
                is needed.

The black man – like a pretzel on the grass –
is sitting vilified because of race,
and option less, he has to let it pass;
pretending not to sense he's out of place.

Another couple point, and laugh, and stare:
fair skin and hair proclaim their easy life.
A honeyed world means they don’t have to care:
their actions cut him like an arctic knife.

Behind, the sacred stone and glass stands for
a fruitful tree of life that’s meant for all,
but cherries are too costly for the poor.
Sweet learning for the rich, though they are dull.

It’s up to you and I to fight against
all orchards that we think unfairly fenced.

A dead baby
  is a baby that's died
      in anyone's language.

One place, pressure, temperature,
The Triple Point,
aqueous molecules skip between
solid, liquid and gas
the salsa between states - identical.

No growth of  ice
water does not accumulate
nor vapour pressure rise
because the waltz, one to another, is equal.

So the three coexist suggesting stasis
while constantly exchanging substance;
a symmetry of balanced dancing stability.

Thrum.
Undulating across the cyan, sea scented lagoon,
  I watch Venezia condense like an artist
  sketching grey lines in the mist.
Murano: thump, a deeper varum,
  static air fills with diesel vapour,
  smelling of engine, tasting of oil.
Thrum away.
My eyes wash the roofs and domes with terracotta,
  till I step into the canvas

cobalt blue, lime green and
lemon yellow warp
stretches on a loom

the shuttle dances
back and forth
weaving my crimson weft
into the pattern of the universe

my pilgrimage zigzags
beneath the comb
as time winds the warp
which begins and ends
beyond my scarlet thread

Miley and I walk down the street
      ignoring the cannabis scented clouds:
      she stops – sniffing every urinated message,
      occasionally leaving a reply.

My dog passes the laughing gas canisters,
    polystyrene boxes and broken glass
    searching for discarded bones, bread and tissue paper
      to eat, rip or claw.

We stroll through the park
      once yellow smiling daffodils grin brown and withered.
Squirrels multiply – fecund rats in the trees,
      Miley too slow to control the rodent population.

Despite urban desolation
      look harder:
        see the green canopy
            grass, birds,
              sometimes even a butterfly.

The world isn’t dead –
      we still have time.

We know that
Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran
  but what secrets does that sentence slyly hide from our eyes?

Who is the ragged rascal that ran round the rugged rock?
  Ralph or Mary, Alfred or Freda?

Was the rock
  amid the sandy ozone odoured, shelly blue roaring sea shore
  or the languishing lavender scented purple pastures of Provence?

Does the rock think
  why is this ragged rascal interrupting my rest,
  pausing my Requiem in Pace with their irreverent running,
  circumnavigating the penumbra of my circumference?

Is it sand or grass that feels
  the feet of the ragged rascal running fast
  or the rugged rock, whose repose the rascal wrecked?

Why is the ragged rascal running
  perspiring to meet a perfumed maid or prurient boy
  or play some fiendish prank of trick or treat on foe or friend?

Will we ever realize our desire to perceive
  why the ragged rascal ran round the rugged rock?

And if the intensions of the ragged rascal become intelligible:
  did Peter Piper taste the peck of pickled pepper that he picked
needs investigation.

A naked branch awaits the spring
    when vernal vigour will awake
      the cuckoos calling on the wing.
A naked branch awaits the spring
    like distant soundless whispering
      around the icy listening lake.
A naked branch awaits the spring,
  when vernal vigour will awake.