Your life is threadbare
and it's cosy

Uncomfortable
but safe

Poor
yet secure

It's not killing you
but then neither are you living.

The head is above water,
Struggling against the tide.

Grinding along on a hamster wheel
that badly needs oiling

I mean

You now earn less than you did at your first job.
It was **** all then

and that was 5 years ago.

The years have not been kind. The hairline has crept upward
Roughly in line with inflation.

A job's a job's a job's a job's a job.

There's a damp roof over your head.

Are you ready to trade all this in for a taste of adventure?

A main course of personal growth
washed down with a side order of

Drudgery

loneliness

and Japanese Encephalitis.

Will they find you out?
Will you be pulled into an office

while a polite local
explains how her English is better than yours?

That could all happen, says the head

but the frightened, quivering heart longs to change.

To jump into the fire and emerge reborn
strong, dynamic, brave. All the things you aren't now.


Just don't hope for too much.

Why did Noah take nits?
Let's pull this ark to bits,
God let Noah take two nits,
Plus two mosquitoes, each proboscis,
Gave humans encephalitis,
What is worse than this?
Why they bring malaria, blip!
What is worse than this?
As well as Noah's two nits,
God let Noah take two rats,
With two fleas on board, that's that,
So Noah brought bubonic plague,
While lovely unicorns floated away,
Then on all those wooden decks,
Noah took two woodpeckers, by heck,
So that was the end of Noah's Ark,
Lucky he wasn't eaten by sharks,
So, why God, did you plan all this, mate?
I know Noah was human to make mistakes,
Taking rats, fleas, mossies, and nits, great!
Was taking two nits more than fate?

(after dean young)

“there are some parts of the human brain
even carps spit out.” but the amygdala births worms
which the fish chew quite sweetly. what isn’t
here: one un-slipped stream, one un-swissed
memory. what is: encephalitis, beetle-black shadow
in the water’s meat. some questions prompt answers
like mouths and feeding. ask yourself why fish bones
are like angels if it isn’t their getting stuck
or the filigree. ask yourself why the first words
of a poem are the skin of an unfathomable ocean,
or why you can only ever think about bodies
and feeding. in the throat, i forgot to say. i take
a layer of algae off the table before sitting down to tuna
and the soup in the coffin that is the kitchen sink.
ask yourself: if the water pressure’s been gone for weeks,
why is your hair always soaked in the morning?

scrambled mind
scrambled eggs
an amalgamation
of cooked flesh
heated fever hot
something on fire
a burning house
ashes that remain
roses and posies
sickness of old
and of the new
brains on fire
breaking down
and broken up
till they're gone