It was only the other day you fell asleep in your old chair
The one that was in your front room decades ago
You didn't see Andy Murray lose but you didn't care
You’d eaten well and heavy eyed you dozed

I’m sorry but when I lost the house it had to go
I know throwing it out was a bit wrong
But if chairs go to heaven though
At least you’ll have something there to sit on

I wish I’d never told you off for smoking by the pump
You looked so sad that I’d made you feel a fool
But imagine how you would have made those people jump
As they were all engulfed by a massive fireball

Enjoy your new lungs and try keeping them clean for a few hours
Enjoy your time with Granddad it’s been thirty years too long
Enjoy strolling through those heavenly gardens with all your favourite flowers
But in heaven, please don’t bag cuttings; I’m sure up there it’s wrong!

I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees.
The empty stream ran quietly dry
With grass cuttings piling high.
If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures
To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight.
So on tip-toe, with sandels bent
Up high I reached to take
The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette
In a theatre made by chance.
Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch
A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps.

My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit
Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles.
Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat
Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack.
Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun
And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum.

And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the *****
Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float.
Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped
Hedge.
The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste.

Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn
Could see down across the land
To the sea and sand.
Of all the beauties that I've known
Nothing beats this Island home.

Love Mary x




My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight.
It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’.
Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises.
The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect
Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land.
Beyond the real world.
In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.

Another silent mid-Fall afternoon
Icy raindrops slash into my neck
The forecast calls for falling thumbtacks soon
One thin umbrella folding
Just 18 feet to the front step

With champagne acquainted
But forgot how to sip it
I slurp it down, eager,
'til I sit soaked and dripping

In time, fevered minds
will lower ears made for hearing
under waves of migraines
as mighty storm fronts are nearing

So I close down the bars and stumble home under awnings
Just to search for your name among newspaper cuttings
I've read the whole issue
and I've frowned over headlines
     put it down

Now, soaked or dry, I've got only time
I've wasted so much of it losing my mind
I'm blind in the rain that now sticks in my hide
     and they were right--
The forecast called for this squall to last all night

Another lonely mid-Fall morning walk
I follow gangs of specters in their steps
And, in the crunching gravel, ghosts will talk
November winds come howling
The second I leave my front step

The flavor's familiar
It comes back every morning,
when sunlight and sparrows
ignore tornado warnings

So the gales pick up strength
and a small bird's bones are hollow
The clouds lay oceans down
setting many sips to swallow

"So goodnight." I depart, but circle back in my wanderings
I'll always wind up here--shaky, ash-faced and yawning
I've read this before
it's printed on poor paper
     in red ink

I can't say why I'm still walking by
Those other front doorsteps that I never try
The thick thumbtack rain stopped but I can't stay dry
     the ghosts were right--
But if I find your name I might stop by.

We stalked hawthorn hedgerows,
Backyards our battlefields,
Wielding wooden swords,
Dustbin-lids, for our shields.

We scouted railway cuttings,
Long abandoned and disused,
Where friendship’s blended alloys,
Were cast, forged and fused.

We patrolled village streets,
Marched along muddied lanes,
Proudly defending ‘our land’,
From raiding, heathen, Danes’.

We boldly challenged Vikings’,
Beneath a Sixties-summer-sun,
Bonding loyalty, faith and trust,
That will never, come undone.

Those days will not return,
Memories-mismatched-truth,
Recalling the fallen heroes,
Fighting follies of our youth.

Protecting imagined Kingdoms,
Lost in time, for evermore,
Boy soldiers standing guard,
In Castles built from straw.

t'was not so long ago
in simple human years,
but eons, in poetic ones, that...

visions of fruited plains,
dimpled mountains,
candied wall-nutty natives,
easy lifted from his
eye's casual glances,
reformed to scribbled essays,
while daily walking on the
concrete steppes of his city,
gems of glass shard sidewalk sparkles
and bluest mailboxes were
raptured word tableaus,
rupturing easy with
volcanic force,
his body's planet,
mantle breaking,
crust-conquering poems,
breakout pimples waves,
molten and easy flowing...

he knew not then
what well now he knows,
the exhausted trembling
of asking,
the slowing wearing pace of
heartbeats of constant query,
the wonder of
wondering incessant,

Are You My Poem?

awoken by the body clock
in the wee, streaming,
rem sleeping hours,
asking the no longer
faithful friend,
his bathroom mirror,
is the accuracy of this
stubbled mess,
the white crusted lips and eyes,
is that my, my nowadays,
answer to

Are You My Poem?

he waits,
he, a red taillight speckle
among many, wait watching,
on a Brooklyn minor bridge
over a minor inlet
one of many, on a longer isle,
as the bridge lifts its arms,
opens its middle belly,
waving bye to a
passing-through freighter,
perhaps
destined for
happy springtime Morocco,
perhaps,
the Malay's divided isles,
wandering wondering
one more time,
if that's his etching,
line drawing poem,
passing by, bye, bye,
so each breathe forcing,
escape-asking,

Are You My Poem?

sometime ago,
a grown man,
his voice changed,
like a teenager,
writing now in but the
simplest terms,
plain jane poems,
in the cadence
of spoken words

for all the fancy phrases,
exhausted,
the sewing box of
precious alphabets,
emptied, leaving only
the tyranny of
hello, have a nice day, how are you feeling,
that's nice, goodnight sleep tight...

there were fewer poems
therein contained,
ceasing to fear,
no need for constancy of asking,
but failing in crafting to craft
even then,
trying but no one answering to

Are You My Poem?

one or two true,
asked,
are you busted,
the nib nub rusted,
your silence, long pauses,
worry us, your poem lovers,
if spent,
how deep is thy rent,
let our concern heal,
patch n' fill,
the cuttings,
the empty grooves that pockmark,
hope wishing asking,
sir sire man,
are you still hopeful,
interrogating,
asking the world,

Are You My Poem?

weeping from the
believed warmth
of their caring,
they too, knowing,
that life has its ways
of choking your voice off,
compelled to advise,
still and then and now,
the constant in my equation,
extant yet,
extant yes,
a voice that still rises
at the end of the
periodic element interrogatory of

Are You My Poem?

the poem answers,
muddled, muddied,
everyday life eats you up,
instead of you feasting upon it,
the tempo, the style,
all now humbug static interference,
but every know and every then,
a long winded answer dances
it's way from the core,
answering well
the question less asked,

Are You My Poem?

spent,
the poet
lol's,
for his truest friends here,
answer the pondering,
in deed, indeed,
you, near and dear
poet brothers and sisters,
you are the answer,
to words looking now,
a tod-toad-tad silly,

**You Are My Poem!

Many of our dead are paper cuttings,
memories of those surviving or
doing duty by our famous dead.
Guardian obituries
stored in books I've read.

Hughes, Eliot, Larkin, Heaney,
MacNiece and Thomas mourning their last drinks.
Uncomfortable shelfmates all,
eternal quarrels, truth debates.

Eliot polite and debonair,
while Hughes cares no for airs and graces
but puts the ladies through their paces.

Heaney digs his pen through family,
myth and culture's history, mining
human misery and mystery,
then Larkin's calendar of life
confronts our stark reality.

I cannot pass these shelves untouched,
demanding voices drench the air,
nor can I find a useful test
by which I can decide who's best.

Through the eye of the needle where necessity lies
and the horizon's a point somewhere off,
someone dies.
On the grains where the sand shifts the mountains away, where the land ***** crab sideways to gather their prey or the fields where the crops dust off MDMA,
I drop,
intellect fades
the night fazes in on sharpened steel blades.

‘Why ask’,said the field mouse to Hedgehog
Who scuttled along softly on four short legs
Wearing a bobble hat made of apache wool
‘I don’t know but truths must be brought on.’

‘Yes’, said Mousey as it perched with fairy
In the brown bed filled with green cuttings
For only here with my friend is the world’s
Beauty allowed a sharing heart and voice.

So take me into the garden with pink roses
Growing one with up turned bright bud
Shoes holding tightly your peering down
Fills out the future with seeded windmills.

Love Mary x

It's time now.
Cut back the roses
down to earth.
Cut back the canes
that bore the flowers,
raising brave heads to the sun,
Now, gone to hips
or browned remains.
A fading tangle on scrawny stems.

Cut back the canes,
sturdy but yellowing now at the edges.
See the old scars of past
cuttings, notches in the plant.
The places where growth ended.

Yet, new canes grew anyway,
bursting below, above, around
the stumps and scars,
or pushed, slender,
new from the ground.

Pile the cuttings.
See the brown, the green,
the yellow.
Marvel at the pile of growth.
Look at the plants, now
small. stripped.

Ready for rest.
Waiting for spring.

I draw on lilac cigars
through my mask
so her journey in neon stays
safely as a highlight
in gas filtered clouds

the faulty starter judders the light
flora scented
and in the flickering clouds
an attempt at landing
reveals her girdle red
in a flash of steely eyes
and suddenly mine were blinded
just as she rubbed against the dark

combing her strands wildly apart
she shook blonde roots and brunettes alike
I'm a sucker for hair turned hydrogen
peroxide mixed with air to make stars
startling amidst malefactory dye

metal booms swung away at each other
in the distance
building her model oxygen tanks
for pin up flower cuttings
and garlands on picket fences

she kissed the ground
and I gas peddled
a stomp on the glowing end
to the stub

only to drop like a skeleton
with lead hands
to follow any seeds
******* burnt rain

The station Tannoy’s so polite,
Train’s here but late; commuter’s plight,
Doors opening, pushed to platform’s edge,
As the herd of bodies forms a hedge,
Will she be there?
A gap, way in, a scramble of feet,
The desperate scans for a vacant seat,
With a jolt and a whine we move away,
Packed with the faces of one more day,
Did she mean what she said?
Past fields and cuttings the city nears,
People gaze blankly, no smiles, no tears,
Blurred names on platforms pass with a rush,
London workers in etiquette’s hush,
But where to meet?
Slowing through tunnels, lean and rock,
Roll under the canopy, groan to a stop,
We pour from the doors like arterial bleeding,
Swept in the flow, haemorrhaged carriage receding,
By the trolley, she’d said
Moving fast, with their own motivations,
The eddy of souls takes me out of the station,
Pull out of the crowd, out of the flow,
Onwards they march to the tube lines below
But we just hold tight under J.K.’s fake signs,
And expression finds space,
Between the lines.

RD@2009

A Poem for June


Just why a cucumber should be so cool
Eludes the logical; a cucumber’s just
A vegetable a-lying on the ground
Awaiting consumption.  But let’s accept
This vegetarian cliché’ simply
To get on with this cool descriptive task:

Whatever’s cool in the falling June sun
Descends through oak leaves, dark and summer green
And dancing down the air falls happily
Upon this cool cucumber cave where sits
Upon a wooden bench a lazy man
Who should be taking now another turn
With lawnmower, shovel, or shears against
The wild greenness of happy midsummer.

But, oh!  Persephone surely won’t mind
If her allotted garden tasks are paused
By her appointed minion rustic who
Takes now his ease in her delightful shade.
For summer after all is more than work;
She calls for dozing too, and dreamily
Watching busy bees buzz among the flowers,
Like fussy matchmakers arranging marriages,
And hummingbirds humming in and out of leaves,
Their sanctuary leaves, to argue at
The nectar-feeders, as if there weren’t
Enough for all.  The squirrels in the trees
Would never condescend to chitter there;
They glare at humans disapprovingly,
Like old teachers unhappily aware
That, oh, somewhere, somehow a child might be
Enjoying life, and that would never do!

Even the ribbon of smoke from the morning’s
Trimmings and cuttings and sawings appears
To be taking a nap in the summer noon,
There gently snoring up wisps of ashes
Instead of roaring, hissing manfully
As it did in the early hours.
                                                     The bench
Along the fence where the tired old man sits
Creaks as he shifts his weight, and watches
His backyard world doze in the leaf-laced sun;
He lights a well-deserved cigar, and sees
Its soothing smoke join with the ******* fire
Ascending heavenward with peaceful thoughts.

In the bardo*
you are floating
aboard the barge of couldhavebeens
and moments that were unseen
not the world
not a boy or a girl
lost
Lost boys are found toys for Thor’s hands
to play with
Lightening lick of guitar solo
striking health into blushed cheeks
Soon you’ll no longer need to be
painted
The eye patches will be removed
and pirate life won’t mean
Scrounging and wishing for an oasis
you’ll throw a life saver
throw a light saber
Glisten the sparkzap through tables
laden with all that’s been spat
from vitriolic minds

Listen
sore elbows from nudging bad spirits away
Blades of bone
and intention can saw through sadness
to the light beyond
like the sky’s pinholes
Stars aren't the cuttings of children
the dark is just a covering
Poke a finger through
Don't fear if you get stuck
for it is only the backdrop to a stage
hiding the mass of light
only there to protect us from blinding joy
Like sunglasses
So be one with your sadness

We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.

A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.

We charge the tunnels headlong--
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments--
The open spins and scatters.

We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.

Garden cuttings grew slowly
in my Aunt's back lawn.

She coaxed them with words
and wet tea-leaves,
watched them flourish one year
in sunlit rows.

Mum had no time for flowers,
looked warily
at this late harvest
from the Mother she adored.

Dried lavender
sifted into hand-sewn bags
we tucked beneath petticoats,
knickers, linen handkerchiefs.

Roses and pinks
filling clear glass vases,
scenting the house as though
Gran was close by,

had just stepped outside
to unpeg her washing.

Jade tree cuttings
In window sill tray

Pictures on walls

Panama hat
Hooked

Not a stick of
Furniture
To soften the bones

Home sweet home

Crescent moon
Through
Undraped window

The cast iron cot frame stood in the garden
At the top left and held the relics of blue
Unleaded paint used to cover a girlish pink
The mattress disintegrated it contained plants
Mother’s cuttings from an extensive garden.

The girl now eleven and very thin
Sat in a homemade embroidered skirt
And played with her unbraided hair
Her feet neatly together like a doll
A teenage doll from The Pedigree range.

The beginning of ******* were forming
And insecurities and dissatisfaction open
That day in the sun with cousin Hilary
Two different specimens of womanhood
I only really knew her a short time .

Love Mary ***

When you kiss me do you feel it
Is your hear mine, should I steel it
Do you feel the same
Supple kiss ever drain
Does your hear beat, beat the same
Will forever be okay
Can you promise me you will stay...
Can I even say the same
Can you leave me hear this way
Expecting me to complie
To say that cuttings not a lie?
One that breaths the words...
That you can love with hurt

You would never break my skin
Razors edge biting in
You would never set me free
Do you have the courage to cut me?
Hurt is feeling, so it's life
But what's the point of living if it is only strife
what's a hand to hold, if there is no reason
Sadness comes and goes like season
But bitter twisted truth
Rips my soul and feelings from heir roots
Your peeciouse blood can spill
Your sacred hands can hold
Bitting metal, mean and cold
Legs stained in red
you can cry in silence
Scream in dread
But not alone
Not again

If you choose me, then hold up our head
I can only do so much and promise little
But to love, you have to love your self
And if it isn't a crime to you, it is to somebosy else
Each evil thought that clouds your head
Every cut, or scar that remains unsaid
For every lie that's sliped your toung
My self is trampled, come undone
If you become my reason, my chosen path in life
You have to love your self, and have to love our life.

The mystic Mys-Match of Mew Manor mounts the moon at midnight. He flies freely, forgetting the faltering fallacies that fold this failing facade of figments of the imagination and inglorious nations into a crooked caricature of creeps, clowns, and carcinogens to our culture. From crack and **** to casual deaths, the population prays for post-******* match days.

What's the reason of rhyme if you don't have a reason to see a new season of sweethearts and treason? The mystic Mys-Match of the planet Piblatch has snatched nary a glance of this reprehensible romance. He hums happily, hovering over the homes of the hurt and the helpless, unaware of the ugly and untrue souls of the suffering below.

Due in part, perhaps, to the planet Piblatch, whose population prowls playfully amongst the pipperplitz plants and the tinktertip trees. A civilization unaware of Gods and demons, *****'s and dip *****.

At sunset, the Piblatchians partake of rackaday root and crushed up clibber clatch cuttings. They see the psychedelic sky ways that sing of sweet things and spacey swings.

As mankind manipulates, murders, and maims itself, the world which waivers with weakened wings is consumed by the carnivores that **** off the common crowd and leave only the corrupt and cantankerous crooks that fall to the depths of despair when the bomb goes off, blotting out humanity's light forever.

But the mystic Mys-Match and his planet Piblatch live on, past the end of time itself. The peaceful people continue to enjoy their lives and never know of the negative notions that drove the dimwitted denizens of Earth into a violent and gruesome grave.

Mankind could have learned something from the Piblatchians, if only they had opened their eyes and seen the light.

At the time as the leaves turned colour
a hushed  slither of an acquaintance
brushed by as Autumn rising.
Healing beneath his tongue
He tasted Marchpane again .
Dazed by the impending changes,
temporarily taking stock.
At the time as the wind stood still
he found his trusted keys
for his Autumnal hut
and opening its door
he felt a rush for those
composted stored Tubers and rare cuttings
as they awaited his thoughts
an outpouring
his selection an inspired command.......

What am I supposed to tell
the children when they bring
their deformed beasts to me?

I teach them the word menagerie as
they clear the project table and sweep
up cuttings from the kitchen floor.

We gather without you for another
slow parade of meticulously made
animals, and I’m embarrassed to
mistake their swans for butterflies.

The sky aligns edge to edge,
a yellow sheet of cellophane,
the afternoon cut and creased
and folded like fractal creature:
a crane inside
a crane inside
a crane.

She stands at the kitchen window, slowly stirring the rich brew. The shade from the Mountain Ash still cloaks half of the tomato plants in cool relief.  The ones in the full sun of day are bigger and are already bearing fruit. What is the message this full exposure/half shaded patch is sending out to her as she gazes and sips her tea?

Remain in the shadows and only live half a life? Exposure yourself to all before you and find your fruit for life spent too soon? Who is to know? Somewhere in there she thinks there must be a happy medium. Some balance between the overly protected and the completely exposed. That is the fine balance she strives to find for herself.

She decides to venture out into the garden and walk the path that lies before her. Around every turn there is a surprise, some beauty to behold. Also along the walk are the nasty pests of life which rot and eat up the beauty that is there to be found. Adjusting the rocks and plantings, she disturbs the nest of the invaders hoping to salvage and rebuild the cuttings; to nurture new growth. Time will tell if she is successful.

She meanders to a new area of the yard still under construction. Development is slow. It takes thought and motivation to make a start; always a bit unsure of how to begin and then how to proceed. Structure takes shape one bit at a time. She has faith that she will be pleased with the end result. There is comfort in knowing that if she does not she can always tear it down and start again. It is not an easy process to begin again but sometimes it is necessary.

All the while, she reminds herself it is the journey along the path and the building as she goes that gives her the most joy; to see her life unfold as she places brick on brick. The garden will be done when it is done. In the meantime, she is enjoying the ever changing design. She sits to take a breath and finish her tea. The sweet refreshment flavours her tongue. She reflects as a gentle smile crosses her lips and she prepares for her day.

In the aftermath,the acid bath.when we melted clean away and forgot about the day the world stood still.
I filled with talking out of tune
spat loudly at the moon who glared at me,
freed from all constraint of 'you ain't doing that'
I flattened out the globe
tugged upon an ear lobe and settled down to make a plan.

One man can make a mountain shake but one man can only take so much,a touch of madness in the air,
I see a different world out there,no one worries,no one cares,no one dares to make complaints
so much for being free of all constraints,we tie ourselves to anything and everything can tie us up.

I'll take a cup of poison soon one more spit at the glaring moon,
should I tidy up my room?
Like hell I will,
while the world stands still the clock ticks on and very soon
I shall be gone
but these thought remain to stain my mind,
what are these things that bind me so?
I'd like to know, and know this well,
all roads do not lead off to Rome,most of them lead straight to hell where Hades waits,and sits atop the fiery gates with invitations in his hand.

I feel the band across my chest is wearing thin and letting in a bit of death,
I take a breath,talk once more,but again I'm out of tune
Life's a boon were gifted with and to be present while we live is optimum,
though some would say it can't be any other way.
I know differently and in the teeth within the cogs I see
the cuttings of my history
which isn't much,
another touch of madness there.
One more breath of clean fresh air and it is done.
The sun has shone its final time
His will be mine not that I care
I'm no longer here or there.

I was a collage of pain,
    weathered in pool of convulsions.

Doused into my subconscious
     then riveted to my frame of thought.

Contradicted ink was versed on my being,
      watered down to the image you see now.

*"We are all a collection of paper cuttings,
                           woven in a mask of smiles.

The bungalow stood empty after he died
Garden shoes hugged the porch step
The glass panelled front door showing
Pale translucent echoes of familiarity
Through its six oblong windows.

I was never allowed to visit
After the day of the funeral
Never able to bounce on the
Cream candlewick double bed
Which had been home.

Or to collect cuttings from the
Dilapidated garden, just a rose
Or two would do to recall a day
Of Summer and deckchairs
Tea and cakes eaten with care.

I was never allowed to embrace
Years of happy holidays shared
Breath in the beauty of memory
Deep down where flowers grow
Never allowed another Spring.

Love Mary xxxxx

I spit lyric
lyrics that are generic
generic but somehow poetic
poetic in the sense of metaphoric.
Poetry must have structure
in order to preserve in the future.
Poetry without rhymes scheme
is like eating a cone without an ice cream
poetry is also good in free verse
but I'm writing this in one verse.
No line endings.
No verse cuttings
Yes! I'm a fan of Cummings,
Wordplay is a good thing
creative and fascinating.
This poem is generic
generic in the sense of simple lyric
simple lyric but somehow metaphoric
Yes! This is poetic.

Red tip shrubs are reflecting intermittent sunshine across puddles of water in the yard , pine cones , straw covers the ground beneath the trees . Steam coming off the road , cars crashing into standing water , garden soaked , eggplant laying sideways...Fall garden looks invigorated , rain barrel overflowing , wheel barrow completely full of water , dead grass from previous grass cuttings have collected at the end of the driveway from water rushing down earlier today .Birds are leaving their cover to forage , dark clouds once again coming from the East ...The rumble of a train coming through Palmetto , big trucks on South Fulton Parkway and the occasional jet coming into Hartsfield .....

Railway cuttings
Cut through my mind
The emptiness
Of what’s left behind.

A flower garden of wildness
Between broken sleepers
Who now find comfort
In railway suburbs.

Love Mary x

Grass cuttings savor an essence, if it were not for the flavor of gasoline added to it. Chores multiply in the garden as days snug up to summer. Warming theory of companion planting goes further than marigolds with tomatoes. Nasturtiums nuzzling cornstalks nicely agree. However, it is the editing of more combative creepers that keep this gardener flustered among the mustard greens. I'm inclined to let it all go, but the peanut grass gets so thuggish, someone needs to teach it a lesson. Yet, full eradication seems too vicious as hummingbirds do adore its frosting of bells. It's a nectar aggrandizement they throb upon in throngs. So, who am I to commit holocaust? After all, with the loosening of soil it provides when pulled, aeration is a welcome aftermath.

So it is continuous, and outright perfection in the pull and push of entirety. Now if I might trade that gas mower in for a push one, a transcendence of impeccability may occur. I might even breathe better.

is an abreviation for a little place,
a town with pollarded trees, an avenue.

pleasant, the word springs to mind,
and colours. she wrapped my old red
trowel in gardening news, and
pasted cuttings on the wall.

the sun was out and while this may
be an issue, we covered our heads,
carried on.

museum past. locked behind glass,
50p for elders, free to locals,
we overpaid, talked of may bugs,
talked of most things.

a day out in llani.

sbm.

He is the bystander
watching as the words drop
to meander amongst the
audience
when the show ends
he becomes
deactivated
demotivated
putting away his thoughts of the day
and those wallowing’s of his following
on social media sites.

The hundreds of nights before and the
ones that will come
stun
his senses,

sidestepping the tut tutting,
the mutterings of the jealous
and the old press cuttings that
fall from a drawer to remind him
of a time when
he wasn’t as good as he
would become
he sees the sun rise over the Olivetti,
a ribbon trails across the floor.

An age is upon him
wearing the old bones
thin.

fin.
© 2017, John Smallshaw.

~


Heat mirage on sandy soil
disintegrating cirrus left from the cool night
skittering horn toad flattens to hiss before
leaving the sunbaked earth
for shadowed hollow protections.

Large red-bottomed fire ants
carry back to a simple hole cuttings of magpie
they store foodstuffs for the hard months ahead
while cleaning the land of rotting bodies.

Hollow bones stripped of flesh
begin to bleach and crack
stiff winds pile feldspar and quartz along the western edge
of a bird long free from nest building and chick rearing.

Only a passing coyote gives the magpie body a second thought
before turning west towards dancing foothills.   /