The air turns thick,
heavy with heat.
The clock goes
tick tock, tick tock,
over, and over again.
We count every second
with bated breath
waiting for our freedom.
The sun shines brightly
through the doors beyond,
beckoning us.
It whispers,
"Come join the world
filled with laughter and light.
Shade your tired eyes
and bask in my warmth and glory."
We wish with all our hearts
to finally escape
our monotonous prison
and run into the land of joy.

i was but a foetus in a womb when Chernobyl happened; the women were told to drink iodine... never knew why, so obviously i was bound to end up like a mutant, given that the radioactivity winds where more potent than those of hot glass Sahara... if you're still stuck in Einstein's physics in terms of causality: cause and effect, i know by a golden standard that you're still confused... Newton's theories about certain things might have been wrong... but a punch is still a punch on the receiving body: a plum coloured blotch, a limo of the puffed up punched cheek of the area around the eye socket.

most these poems could be forgotten in an instant,
a blink of an eye to account for 365 sunrises
on an orb, dense with salty waters,
most of them could become dinosaur bones
on the flag of Wales, just like that! snap! click!
there... prehistory tangled on display
oddly rushed into a crowd of waving hands
with its fluttering creases...
but then i know what poetry is for...
it's not for galleries, not for exhibitions,
not freak shows... not stadiums with amassed
crowds shouting drunken grunts...
poetry isn't for that...
take Alla Ivanivna (aged 87), living in
the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a remote
place called Poliske, once inhabited by
20,000... later 20... 17 of which died,
leaving 3 ghosts... well, souls...
a rickety hut, snow through half the year,
Columbus birches (explorers of the forests,
the scouts of the forests),
she's there living on 40 euros a month,
her food gets delivered,
perhaps a stove to warm-up,
she survived the **** invasion,
the Soviet-induced famine,
her husband died when she was 20 in
a car crash...through the Stalinist repression,
and then Chernobyl...
and then she quotes TS Eliot -
an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing,
there... that's poetry... that's what poetry
is for... it's not an art to be shouted on rooftops,
it's not a honing device for you the bee
and the vast swarm to come looking for you...
Alla is a gallery, the purpose...
she remembers the good old days - and
she remembers a line from a poem...
memory is poetry's greatest ally,
actually poetry is a kind of memory,
perhaps a tool to peer into a vast vault of
images, given poetry is sometimes unheard
and encoded with these crude symbols...
you keep one line from a poem rather than the
whole poem like a trained monkey schoolchild
and your life flashes before your eyes over
the dim bleak vegetation of Ukrainian winters -
it's almost like a slap against Kant's categorical
imperative of working out your life with
one maxim, or with several, whatever;
and that's why it so ******* hurts to craft*.

I thought I knew what love looked like
now every time I log on
I get lost in your eyes

I thought that I was stronger than ever
but your smile makes me feel weak
I thought I had matured and grown
you make me feel like a schoolchild crushing

Whatever it is, it won't matter
Whatever it is, it can wait
2yrs4hrs
Whatever it is, I don't care.

Will I be enough?
Are you real?
Are you warm to the touch?
What does your hair smell like?

I thought I was crying
until you made me look
now
it's
fine

we have time

Winter lingers like a petulant schoolchild:
Clouds jostle for position, darkening with rain.
A sudden chilled wind rushes from the storm’s
Leading edge, stirring birds to flight.

Natural drains roar with the shower-fed torrent.
Trickling streams become dark-mirrored cascades.
Wind-blown branches whip sharply, some toppling
Under the relentless beating.

A fleeting slice of sunlight rolls across the distant hills.
The first stirrings of wildlife crash through the thickets.
Robins race for food.  Songbirds raise tentative voices.
The charged air is filled with the smell of wet
Foliage.

The rains would soon resume.  His usual crossing
point had already vanished.  He settled back in his
Lean-to shelter, finished his meal, and pondered the
Approaching darkness.