My first cigarette was at twelve years old,
under the climbing frame,
after my turn on the monkey bars.

My mate told me not to do it-
he tried to take it off me but
was too late.
I’ve been trying to quit ever since.
Soon after, that little climber
discovered cider, yearned
for something wider and
ended up with alcohol poisoning by
the end of the year.

My first stand-up gig was Lee Mack.
I was 13.
I sat right at the back on the balcony and revelled in the
happy faces below me.
Ending with a slow motion impression of Eric Morecambe,
I could’ve sworn it was the fastest hour of my life.
I can’t believe I was
So naïve.

When I sat my first exam at sixteen,
an hour seemed a minute.
Crash forward to A-levels and I
was being examined in a
therapist’s office-
how the tables had turned.
Ticking boxes to be assessed and there’s no way I can
pass this test because a
high score can only mean
very bad things.

How can life be so virile, yet so lacking and sterile?

I was told I’d find myself at uni
But I’ve ended up losing myself at twenty.

Yet here I go...
To put on a show,
In these stanzas' rhymes I will stow,
Creating this laminar flow,
Stringing words together to form a sentence like an archipelago,
Needing this poem like bread dough,
Although I know it will never become a gateau,
Nor a chocolate Bordeaux,
It is more akin to a cheapo combo,
Housing poultry clauses building a bordello,
Impertinent this may seem like loving a guanaco,
But what you will learn from this puppet show,
*Is that not all poems have to rhyme,
In order to flow.

If I take to my drill and tin snips,
cut slits for my eyes in a bucket
of galvanized steel;

If I fashion from spent, inked
aluminum plates the newspaper
doesn't need anymore
a flimsy laminar armour;

If I stride donned in these and
perhaps with a blade of splintering
moulding left after the renovation
into the yard to hack at the vile
violet hyacinth blooms
laying siege to the aging tulip,
presuming to take the edge
gardens by attrition,

would you see as once you saw,
my sweet Dulcinea, the quixotic buffoon
so deep in delusion,
so madly in love with you.

Everything seems worse
When its covered in a grey haze
Even when the spikes of evergreen trees glisten
And the typically dull roads shine

When grey clouds shield the stars and the moon
Only artificial light dares seep through your open window
Along with the clean smell of heavy downpour
It seems as if only you are aware

Perhaps, you think, it will never end
The rain, as if ice, frozen in time
Fog shielding you from the light
Forever prohibited from basking in its beauty and splendor

But then, the noises soften
An experience you never dared hope fore
The generous sun rises once again
Cautiously optimistic, you follow the light

You dare step out the open window
Into the grey haze, into the smell of rain
Lightening and thunder crashes and booms above
But you no longer fear it

Pour it.
Don't want to taste it
anymore.
Just pour it right
into my heart,
funnel it into my soul.
Flood me with it,
my head is swimming.
Pour it.
Vacuous vessel,
my body and mind.
Filled to the brim,
marinated and brined.
Sopped up.
Wrung out.
Pour it.
Pouring.
Down the spout.

even when i lived in barrels i was stung by pre-Euclidean geometries

aping right angles, askew of a laminar flow of Time.
even when i stutter like butter on a lightning bolt
my collisions resolve dormancy
wherever i evict a conspicuous
ascetic tenet.

i twist The End where The Beginning buds;
and watch for spontaneous eruptions-

for Origins, mapped to a powder keg
with a damp fuse.

[ it’s steam engines now… ]

AND
the moon’s belly
is a bright eclipse
clamor-locked in the beastly
barrage of our tuneless
arias…
coping with despotic realities
with aplomb; birthing sunshine
from a myth mirror
emblazoned where harm refracts
exact moments-
tumbling magnetic…

as your eyes
Yahtzee the Forbidden
like a rogue.

with
blunt force
Rama.
as Fore-
​​​​​​​told.

II

infinity pools are finite if you swim like a rock.
or fall asleep when a lullabies’ on fire.


just so you Know.

The fog is all-pervasive
From here, it shades every vista

I thought it was was perhaps a smudge on my lenses
Or, considering the betrayal from my other faculties,
the beginning of the dimming that comes with age,

But my glasses were clean, and my eyes, but for the floaters, were clear

The edges fade as the settling fog
             reduces my view to impressionism

The streetlights pass at irregular intervals and I hold to my position at the end of the undulating line of red tail lights

When the flow finally becomes laminar, I am relieved,

Feeling like I'm making the jump to light speed as the beacons fly past,
Finally finding their proper rhythm