I lay awake last night
listening to the windchime
I knew for sure
it was telling tales
singing songs
and some poems too.
At times loud
at times soft
it talked and talked.

will the windchime be ringing
tonight, again?

Maybe I should be dressed
to join windchime and her friend!
Ah, yes I will listen
for the howling sound,
the first gusts of wind
and rush out
when it joins its friend.

On lonely nights
wind chime is my friend.

You scream urgency
Like an accident and emergency
waiting room,
like a person relapsing into addiction,
Because they pushed themselves
too soon.
And there are claw marks in the soil,
Where you've tried to get to grips,
with solid ground,
There's a danger in your voice,
Like a lost child waiting to be found,
And you string sentences at a time
but no sound emits.
Danger, like,
Racing cars and frightened cries,
And there are holes in your back,
Formed by the lies,
You've been subjected too
And i wonder if i could use them
To breath life back into you.
I wonder if i get close enough,
If i could see,
The dreams and memories,
Before they turned stale
And congealed in your veins,
And left you entangled in the remains.
The valleys of your eyes,
Run wide and down deep,
And when you weep,
Your tears fall heavier,
Than a ten tonne van,
You're a shadow of the man,
You used to be,
And even your shadow,
Has deserted you,
Sought someone anew.
And your foundations
Are built on heartache and pain,
And those little tear ducts in your eyes,
Constantly rain,
But you you're in a draught,
All the love you've showered others in
Means you've ran out,
for yourself,
And your health is a picture
Of cigarettes and late night drinks,
Old whiskey, poured down sinks,
And you're reaching the brink,
The breaking point,
But you quite like the sound,
Of broken plates,
And you quite like the taste,
Of self destruction.
And there's a ghost,
Where you used to be,
Haunting the curves
Of your smile,
That you paint on,
Why you defile
Your skin,
This terror your living in,
Could start a thousand wars,
And this battle your fighting,
Inside of your mind,
Leaves a carcus, a morsel,
Of yourself behind.
Your insides stick to the past,
Like double sided cello tape,
And there are windchimes in your spine,
Where your bones should be,
And your heart on your sleeve,
Is clouded,
By red marks where you've sliced open your skin,
In at attempt to be free,
Of those demons, the sin,
For a new beginning.
There's toxic in your lungs,
And a noose around your neck,
Where you've hung your expectations
Too high,
And you're hanging by a thread,
And tying knots the further down you slip,
As you sip,
Another shot of courage.
But there's only so long,
One can hold on for,
And believe me I've been down
To the depths of hell and danced with the devil
On many occasions,
And the sheer frustration,
Of the attempts to be patient,
Are wearing thin,
Like the warm skin, that stretches,
Over your protruding bones.

You scream urgency like an accident and emergency waiting room, like a person relapsing into addiction, because they pushed themselves too soon.
And there are claw marks in the soil, where you've tried to get to grips, with your inner turmoil.
And there's a danger in your voice, like a lost child waiting to be found, and you string sentences at a time but no sound, emits. As you sit in fits, of hysterics.
Danger, like racing cars and frightened cries, and there are holes in your back, formed by the lies, you've been subjected too. And i wonder if i could use them to carefully breathe, life back into you.
The life that you seem to have let slip through your finger tips, like dry sand, and there are wants and demands, taped to the pupils of your eyes, and i wonder if i get close enough, if i could see, if i could prize, them open.
The dreams and memories, before they turned stale and congealed in your veins, before they curled up and died, and left you entangled, in the remains.
And the valleys of your eyes, run wide and down deep, and when you weep, your tears fall heavier, than a ten tonne van, falling from unreachable heights.
And there are marks on your body, where you've lost the fights, the sleepless nights, with yourself. And you're a shadow of the man, you used to be, and even your shadow, has sought someone anew.
And your foundations are built on heartache and pain, and those little tear ducts in your eyes, they constantly rain. torrential down pours.
And there is hopelessness, embedded deep within your pours and despite the ongoing rain, you,you're in a draught, all the love you've showered others in means you've ran out, for yourself.
And your health, is a picture of cigarettes and late night drinks, old whiskey, poured down sinks.
And you're reaching the brink, the breaking point. But you quite like the sound, of broken plates and you greet with haste, the familiar taste of self destruction.
And there's a ghost, where you used to be, haunting the curves of  your smile, watching you all the while, as you destroy and defile, the cold skin, that stretches over your protruding bones.
This terror your living in, lures the wolves home, could start a thousand wars, and this battle your fighting, these revolving doors, inside of your mind, leave a carcus, a morsel, a shell, of yourself behind.
And your insides stick to the past, like double sided cello tape, and there are windchimes in your spine, counting down the time you wait, for freedom to meet you with open arms, and your arms, paint a picture of self harm, in bright red pen, and the ringing of alarms is renewed again and again.
And your heart on your sleeve, is clouded, and weaved, between fragile pastel pink scars, and the hesitation in your voice, jars any conversation, and you scream in frustration as we express your complications.
And you, you wish desperately, that you could be free, of those demons, the sin, for a new beginning.
And there's toxic in your lungs, and a noose around your neck,where you've hung your expectations too high,
And you're hanging by a thread, and the further you slip, the more knots you tie, in an attempt to buy time,
And you drink down each crime against yourself, with another bottle of wine, as you search and unwind, the mazes within your mind.
And you can see in the way you carry your frame, that you've been to the depths of hell and danced with the devil in vain, on many occasions,
And your eyes they tell tales wanders, of liquid sedation, as you squeeze into a nation, too small, too handle, too inexperienced, too dismantle, the train wreck, you see, every time you look intensely, at your reflection,
And your recollections of your past, are like shards of sharp glass,scattered between the seams of your life, and you, you batter the strife, with drug filled bombs, painful tongues and licks, of the kicks, you deny to be true, as you continue to fall through, reality in a clarity, smeared with drunken violence, and ear piercing silence.

I can't imagine how this looks
Me, face of clay
Silent windchime mouth
Aquariam glass eyeballs
Snowglobe life
Swimming in glitter
Tsunami at your hands
Plastic toes stuck
Until I lunge
Eyes flare heat
Stove top face
Coiled brain
Orange is the color I saw in you
Finger painted pianos
Mole rat grass
You took my monocle
Smashed glass in the garden
Next to tulip bulbs
That will grow in as your teeth
Fingers on mice
Like your genes
Granola girls take paths
I am glued, plastic feet
You walk around me

i sit here and overdose in my imagination for the fifth time today
too poor to **** myself with a pharmaceutical fantasy no pain just sleep
it's a matter of time before i'm found swinging in my basement necrotic windchime
i'm not so much a poet as a sad kid rambling who can only write inebriated
this one time life thing is getting me sick and i just don't..
**** me i thought i was stronger than this yet years with a **** job
no girl and 5 weeks a night of left hand ******* while i choke down
another bottle bottle bottled my emotions in a seven dollar anesthetic
i've been romanticizing a wished for **** addiction at least that would be an
excuse for why i'm a wasted wasting waste of life doomed to insecurity
i can't even remember half the words i learned in school
you're probably sick of my self loathing and every poem i write is
just another narcissistic cry for help because i'm to proud to ball up and cry
don't even bother this time i don't want your reason for why i can't top myself
kick my bucket, burn my farm, pluck out my eyes and puke till i die
i'm ******* done i'm just too tired to try
to all those girls i never kissed - i love you
to all those ******* i never hit - i love you
to that boy that i might have found myself with - i love you
to my best best best friends the few that i have - i love you
i was never comfortable in my skin
maybe i'll  be comfortable in my grave

dust has collected in this once filled room of my mine

it's floated and settled on the last few things left behind

spellbind

windchime

now i can say this empty space is all mine


8 years of pacing this room

8 years of shouting at the moon

8 years of sleeping til noon

just to ignore the fact I meant nothing to you


so much anger has made home in my bones

the way you used to speak about me felt like being casted with stones

I used to try and drown out your tasteless, colorless tone

you type "she's dramatic" in a text on your phone


I expected this feeling of indifference to feel free with no stop lights

yet this empty space

and this empty mind

coincide

with what I've known this whole time


that all too familiar feeling of restlessness has come to an end

and even though there are still memories burned into my head

I don't believe I have anything else left unsaid


I envied your callousness

I despised your self-righteousness

and i ached at your lack of consequence

what caught your eye was never my elegance

but rather my callowness


as the ice in your drink swirls and melts

and you're blaming me besides everyone else

as your anger starts to swell

just remember it was me who wasn't treated well


we can keep our heads down while our eyes meet on the street

while you pretend I don't resemble meadowsweet

and that we never danced in my kitchen with me on your feet

but

to be honest

in the end

we were always offbeat

when you chose to secede

I found you to not be an aesthete

if you could agree

to be without me


this story is begging to no longer be told

so maybe I'll revisit this time of my life when I've seen how my life will unfold

til then my king is fallen on this chess board

my feelings are buried far past the sea's shore

and I've finally

stopped keeping score

This barren street at night
       Dust storms
Picking up the Autumn leaves
In cyclones
Decorations lingering
Halloween ghost
Hanging from a tree
The sensation of a witch
Being born at every
Hit of my cigarette
Wondering why more
   Other lost souls
Are not outside smoking
Cigarettes shaking in hoodies
That are too large
For them
Trying to solve this universe

Glass renders it silent,
its movements make sweet music.
Its song remains unshared
until someone, the window, opens.

One hot and sultry summer night,
While the trees outside stood dark and still,
I tried to get my checkbook right,
At the desk beside my window sill.

One thing moved in the heat and damp,
The whispering of a hundred moths,
Trapped around the backyard lamp.
In pity, I went and turned it off.

They flew away and left me there,
Wishing that something, likewise, might
Free me from the musty air
That gathered around my dim desk light.

My old brass wind-harp, long un-tongued,
Gave forth a single, clarion chime,
From where it had, untroubled, hung.
A neighbor’s porch gave answering rhyme.

I turned to see the heat-lights leap
Between the towering thunderheads,
Which had gathered in the upper deep,
While I nodded, working, half asleep.

Your laugh
Isn't a windchime
It's
    The
         Whole
                   *******
                               Symphony
Your smile
Lines up the notes
Oh
    So
       Perf
             ect
                  ly

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I love my dear,
Her name is Emilia.
Gazing at her from far away,
Just makes my day.

Jet-black silky flowing locks,
like the Milky Way which never stops.
Bursting with the scent of a quaint flower,
Most undoubtedly from a morning shower.

Mere curtains but, those are,
To the cutesy face with eyes ajar.
Her skin, infinitely youthful, flawless and luminous,
In comparison, even cherubs appear longevous.

Prismatic obsidian orbs suspended in opal,
Whisks you someplace else⸻a portal.
Thin clear lenses in a sleek black frame,
Masks wild vivacious eyes to look tame.

Hereunder lies a dainty nose,
With a soft hue like a pink rose.
Cherry lips so full and round,
Even a light kiss will be sure to astound.

A euphonious voice reberverates,
through every heart it penetrates.
Resonant, crisp, and fine,
Pleasant, like a ring of a windchime.

Slender and tender,
Are her hands and fingers.
Deft and skillful is her fingerwork,
Weaving melodies as bright as firework.

If the world was a blossoming garden,
Sunflowers would represent this maiden.
Her presence unquestionably amazes,
blooming wide smiles on countless faces.

A brilliant joyous yellow lustre,
Is the aura that defines her.
She's a dazzling ray of light,
So bid all your worries good night!

Magnetic is her personality,
And attractive is her positivity.
Loved and respected by all is she,
friendly and cheery as all should be.

brittle leaves swing with windchime thrills
scattering minature fairy hats northwards
bristle tops of seeded whimsy
light strokes branches of resilience
revealing notches and furrows filled with courage
warmed and hazelnut tones of sap and towering elegance
in the end flourishing into taffeta skirts of green
plumes, plums and sour-apple caterpillars

Summertime windchime song
I hear its brevity
In your laughter
Like bitter cold rain on my tongue
Moments
We danced through puddles
To that summer song
Stuck in my head
Like your picturesque hello
And how it seems so long ago
A wink of times blind eye
And there we are
Street signs in tow
My head in your lap
Counting sunroof stars
Like sparklers
Streaming to meet our dust
On back roads
We race to beat our adrenaline home
Now let months go
Walking to meet the street
Laying a blanket at our feet
We talked to coax the stars away
Reeled in a shy shy sunlit sky
Like kids Christmas morn peeking
To see the tree wear its halo glow
And bask in memories as they grow

Opening the channel from there to here
Opportunity for a song
Comfort from the heavens
With breath it moves along

And dangles by his front porch swing
Your chair so very near
Death may claim the warmth of one
But not the music that you'll hear

For love endures all things they say
Even loneliness and pain
A simple windchime reminder
Until you find him once again.

If butterflies were piano keys, when played they would create a sound so faint and beautiful that it would resonate within your eardrums for a thousand years.
The music fabricated from the monarchs would take you back, way back to the years where your grandmothers windchime that hung from her old rickety porch pinged and chinged playfully in the wind.
The music from the Swallowtails would sound like the rustic countryside plains, filled with rustling waves of weeds that you call flowers because they are just to pretty to be called weeds.
The music played from this piano is not just beautiful however.
These tunes come with a cost.
For each key pressed on the mosaic of keys that symmetrically flow down the keyboard takes the life of the butterfly used to bring forth the sound and the memory.
Not only do you hear the song, the memory, you hear the crunch of nature’s thorax.
The crushed and crumbling thoraxes play a song too.
Not beautiful, but melancholy.
Like the whisper of a flower that will never bloom for the morning sun again.
A faint light that leads unto eternal darkness and into a world where no butterflies soar through the sky.
All because you played the piano who’s keys were made of butterfly wings.

Sometimes I go for a walk without myself
  not really alone but beyond the self
I let the fresh air fill my lungs
  at the same time the windchime rung
Connected to the sound
  I felt my heart pound
I noticed the crickets chants
  as the trees started to dance

Eventually,
We all get older.
We wake up and find ourselves standing on the precipice of adult.
We brace our bodies for the shift that’s sure to come,
The jump, the free fall,
The swan dive into the gatekept world of grown ups,
Where we’ve been barred out for long enough.
Countless hours spent building up dreamscapes
of getting out
And growing up
And getting rich
Or famous
Or beautiful.
Or brilliant.
We go reckless and proud and headfirst into ice cream for dinner
And socks that exist only in pairs
And questionable bedtimes
And bad decisions
And for the briefest and sweetest of moments we think,
By golly, I’ve made it.

Eventually,
We all get older.
The evidence of our ice cream dinners shows up on our hips
and thighs,
Our bodies betray our most private moments,
Shouting out to any passerby,
“I’ve had six pints of ben and jerry’s just this week!
I haven’t used my gym membership in well over a year
and at this point, i’m afraid to go in to cancel it!”
And, seriously, what is up with the sock thing?
Does my dryer consume socks?
Like, if my dryer doesn’t maintain a steady diet of socks,
Will it starve?
Will it explode?
Will it go on strike and recruit my washer to join in the fighting of the good fight?
Who do I call when my laundry appliances spin cycle their way into civil unrest?
A sacrificial sock here and there is better than the alternative,
I suppose,
Because I sure as **** can’t afford a new appliance,
let alone two,
And also, at what point do i start to feel like I can comfortably afford a new appliance?
Is it when I stop throwing money at a gym membership that i haven’t used in like, twelve-plus months,
or does that come some other time?
And why is it that anymore, by 9:30 every night,
My body starts to feel its own weight
all at once,
It’s as if I couldn’t remain upright if my life depended on it.
Is that because, for the last fifteen months, I have poured my hard-earned dollars into a gym membership that I have used
not one time in,
coincidentally,
the last fifteen months?
Like, all jokes aside,
why would we,
As an ever-evolving, self-aware, species
Continue to dish out nearly twenty U.S. dollars a month
Fifteen separate times
For a gym membership that we are obviously
Never going to use again?
And just like that,
It is so
Clear.
You have no ******* idea what you are doing.

Eventually,
We all get older.
We come to accept that more often than not,
Days will be bookended by more questions than answers.
If we’re lucky,
We might find ourselves learning to lean into the gray spaces,
the precariousness of it all,
Instead of trying to stain it peachy.
To find a quiet corner in the static,
To let the strangeness that be wrap itself around you,
Is a feeling that I suspect only an elite few ever get really good at.
To those of us who still try,
To those of you who are still trying,
Take pride in the practice.
No one gets good at being comfortable in the gray on their first try.
For some, it takes a lifetime.
For others, lifetimes.
But from what i’ve been told,
It’s well worth the waiting for.

Eventually,
We all get older.
Yes, even the mamaws and the willow trees
and the baby brothers
the first grade teachers, too,
and the cicada who met your acquaintance that one summer afternoon all those years ago.
The dads, the best dogs, the single moms,
Yup, they all get older, too, eventually.
As we all do.
When they go,
(we all go, you know, eventually)
we remember them for their windchime giggles
or you find them in the way you still brush your hair,
Just how they taught you.
People tend to leave breadcrumbs of themselves all over the place.
If you pay enough attention,
You can find them **** near anywhere.
You have your mother’s eyes, for example,
Or so you’ve been told,
A hereditary heirloom from her to you.
Even if you never could quite see the resemblance.
but lately, you’ve noticed,
There is a familiar sort of something there,
In your own lookalike set,
You can just barely, almost, make it out
When you tie your hair back and tilt your head just so.
It comes most clearly in the mirror after the kind of day
you don’t want to talk about.
When being has broken you down,
There’s a skepticism,
or a longing maybe.
You’ve seen this somewhere before, have you not?
A daydream perhaps?
A long-forgotten dandelion wish
or a memory dislodged?
You’re still working out the logistics, the linguistics of it,
But you saw this, once upon a time,
Took note of it,
Came to know it well, you think,
Certainly it must have existed in your mother’s eyes,
must’ve because,
It’s a familiar sort of something.
You first remember it way back when,
Yes, that’s it,
Something from way back
when all you wanted to know was what it meant to be her,
To be big,
To be grown up.
Peculiar, though, isn’t it?
it seems such a juvenile sort of something now,
Looking at it from way up here,
Seeing it in your own reflection for the first time,
Does it not?
Big, grown.
An adolescent sort of uncertainty, possibly,
Or -- no, that’s not quite it,
Childlike wonder, it must be,
In her eyes and yours.
Proof, I suppose,
That eventually,
we all get older.
And maybe it’s presumptuous to assume,
But one can’t help but wonder,
Aren’t we all just grown up kids?
Aren’t we all making it up as we go
and filling in the gaps with the cadence of a child,
Your mother must’ve, too, i’d guess,
with that sort of something in her eyes.
Aren’t we all stumbling, scrambling, doing our best to scrape by,
Praying to the dryer gods that our **** doesn’t break,
And if it does,
We cross our fingers for the tragic death of an imaginary, estranged, great-uncle who just so happens to have acquired a hefty sum of money throughout his life and, well,
i’ll be ******,
If he didn’t make you his beneficiary! Stranger things have happened here, have they not?
Aren’t we all just trying to understand?
ourselves?
and people?
and god and grief and bliss and sickness and marriage and death, hope and money, how the defrost works, and what it is about karma that makes her such a ***** and what it means to be a good person, anyways, and taxes and laundry and which drugs are must-trys and which are don’t-evers and when drinking is considered to be a “problem” and how people can push THAT out of THERE and the art of loving and the arguably more advanced art of being loved and forgiveness and success and desire and *** and stick shifts and the beauty of a deep breath?
Aren’t we all lost out here?
Aren’t we all scared out of our minds?
A bunch of grown up kids, really.
A ragtag group of misfits, try-hards, have-beens, and never-weres.

Eventually,
We all get older
Except those of us who don’t, I suppose.
I’d venture that we’re all still trying to figure out how to understand that, too.
We get older, just the same, as one does,
our hips get wider and our dryers get nicer, newer.
Teenage girls seem to get ever-prettier, the rich get richer,
cruelty gets more cunning and the planet gets sicker.
We get far more than we bargained for or
Far less than we deserve,
We get busy living and dying in tangent,
love gets stronger, scarier,
and we keep the faith that some day,
Somehow, love will get simpler, sweeter,
and time, as it does, gets on with itself,
despite it all.
In spite of it all.
And, as we do, we get older.
And still,
we have no ******* clue what we are doing.
If we’re being really honest here,
We understand not one ******* thing about whatever this is,
And I’m not fully convinced that we even want to know.

So, we let ourselves be small in big bodies.
We eat ice cream for dinner to remind our little selves that there is joy in the forbidden, the unpredictable, and the delicious.
We approach socks with reckless abandon,
pair a tall christmas
With a no-show pineapple-speckled grey,
We take on every decision with the impulsivity of a tiny human who,
Roughly and at best,
Has six years of life experience under their belt,
Skipped their afternoon nap,
and has developed an apparent affinity for shotty judgement calls,
We’ll apologize for it later.
And it’s true of most of us,
I’d think,
That we hope for a day somewhere down the line,
when we’re a little older,
A little wiser,
A little bit in a position in which we can comfortably afford a new dryer should we need to,
We wait for the day when we’ll wake up, as normal a morning as any,
And it’ll hit us:
By golly, i’ve made it.

The truth, i think, is that so few ever actually do.
Make it, I mean,
Whatever that is for you.
We hang on to our hope and convince ourselves we’re satisfied,
Or that we’re better off now than when we started.
Maybe we are.
But if you ask me?
I don’t think it matters.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my mom’s eyes in my own reflection.
I’ve asked all the questions,
Looked hard for a clue or a compass to point me to
Where i’m supposed to be going,
What it all means,
Who to trust
What to expect out of a person,
What people expect out of me,
Where to go to find lost souls,
Where I fit into the grand scheme,
And like, what even is this whole “grand scheme” thing anyways?
All this to say,
I don’t think she knows any better than I do anyhow.
Or than her mom before her.
Grown up kids, you know?
Little people in big bodies.
Every last one of us.
Growing up
And getting older
and getting the **** out of dodge
before we have a chance to catch up with ourselves.
I think it's the best way, truth be told.
But who’s to say, really?
I, for one,
Have no ******* idea what i am doing,
And if I was the gambling kind,
I’d bet my bottom dollar that you don’t have a ******* clue,
either.
We’re all just figuring it out, aren’t we?
Grown up kids, that’s all.
Little people in big bodies,
Just making it up as we go.



a.m.

It was the day before you left
I remember the breakfast
then the walk.
The floral gardens are so lovely
in the early summer.

Focused perfectly
you framed in roses
within the arch
of the climbing rose arbor
Somewhere a windchime
was lilting.

Looking now
at the last photograph
I would take of you.
They say the clicking camera
tells no lies

Your ashen loveless face
Was saying the goodbye
I heard this morning.

When a tree waves its green leafy hand,
Most don't notice, but I understand;
The swaying of a flower, the buzz of a bee . . .
That's how my garden beckons to me

The little blades of grass gently nod
As a worm pokes his head through the sod;
Cast blame if you will on my vanity,
But I'm certain he's looking for me

Now the wind wants to join in the game --
Spying a windchime, it takes careful aim;
Soon the air fills with a soft melody,
And I smile, knowing it's playing for me

I watch as the sun sweeps clouds away,
Showing off with such gaudy display;
But I must admit, the sun's victory
Causes the flowers to dance with glee

And I stand in awe amidst this scene
Of peace and beauty.  If I were a Queen
What nobler entitlement could there be
Than these treasures unfurled before me?

A warble suddenly hushes life's din,
And soon more feathered minstrels join in;
But such incidents are no mystery . . .
That's just my garden calling to me

"There's a whole new world here,
and you're trying to debate who God is
Ignoring all the growing plants
And animals feeding on them
Turning a blind eye to the hunters, gatherers, and civilizations.
Look at the tadpoles

Watch how the blades of grass bend to the windchime lullaby through mountains like passengers on the T in
Boston

Witness detail before you try to figure out some black and white
yes and no answer.
Try empathy.

Discuss common ground
on where the rivers are,
which spiders are poisonous
which sliders just look that way.
Don't ever decide who gets to name
god.

Decide who gets to name the blades of
grass.

Agree on who names the spider.
You can name the trees.
I'll name the oceans

before you know it
this new world
has a place for both of us

and isn't that world more beautiful?"

1951
Manchester in
The North West Of England

The city was broken after the war.
England had won it was said
But it didn't feel like that we won.
I remember the
old smoke stained bricks
of the inner city school.
I remember it in sepia
It had no colors back then.
Nothing did.

Until she came to teach us.
She was beautiful her silks
flowed from her like clouds.
So many colors reds
and magentas and pink and blues

I looked at her and
I wanted to be with her
She was the brightest thing I had seen
since the war had ended.

She said she was from India.
And her dress was a sari.
She had my heart with the
gentle softness of her voice.
Her windchime bracelets
on her lovely honeyed skin tinkled.
But it was her tranquility
that floored me.

She would ask
what have you learned today?
share it with us.
We spoke in a cacophony.
Hush now children she whispered.
listen and learn from each other.
You will all get a turn.

Then when we were troubled
she would drop an important meeting
with adult teachers.
I have an urgent need to speak
with one of my students
She said.

I remember once
i said to her Mrs. Chowdhury.
Why should we work so hard?
there are no jobs anymore.

She said softly but firmly
I know you all each and every one of you.
Her sari swished even louder
I knew I had said the wrong thing.

There is a teacher,
a doctor,
a nurse,
a poet,
a craftsman,
a soccer player,
just in this clas,
i can see it,
I Know this.

Then she opened
the old classroom  window.
and the cool spring air
filtered into the chalky room.
The lilac perfumes drifted  into the room.
What is that fragrance class?
It is Lilacs,
Mrs. Chowdhury,
we sang in unison.
Yes, it is lilacs children.
Last year they all died
with the winter storms.
But now they are back
as sweet as ever.

The jobs died with the war.
But they will be back.
You must all learn as much
as you can to take them.
children.
She never lost a single chance
to teach us something.

I get back to the UK
every now and then .
I am a doctor.
perhaps the one she saw
in her class so long ago.

I call in to see her
in her tiny retirement flat
in Manchester.

She pours me a cup of green tea.
Into a delicate china cup.
It is grown in the foothills
of the Himalayas
she whispers
it is picked young.
so fresh so nourishing.
Never losing her chance
to teach me something new.
Now tell me
what new things
have you learned in America .?

Like watching a windchime's motions.
While your emotionless breath
blows upon it.

If we ate the rich
We could build playhouses from their bones
Paint fairytales onto marrow
Watch our children dig pixie dust from the grooves
Charleston to their windchime laughter

If we ate the rich
We could pave roads with their teeth
Crushed into twinkling mosaics
Speed in glee down the polished calcium roads
Walk on blooms of gold and lilac at sunset

If we ate the rich
Their skin could line our altars
Or catch the heat slipping through our walls
To warm our hearts or frozen feet
Whichever love was needed most

If we ate the rich
And cleaned our teeth for ligaments
And spat out the fatty gristle
And when all that remained of the last billionaire
Were just an eyesocket and some coins

We could sit back,
Minds and bellies full to the brim,
Fragmented bourgeoisie burps ringing, melodious,
And laugh at those who claimed, in the old days,

"You can't eat money".

the irregular rhythm
of the wood windchimes
lulls me into a sort of sleep
one where dreams are based
on worried realities yet
magnified in a daliesque manner
all bent out of shape and pooling
at my feet, in garish coloured mists
whist in the background something whispers
"tis the gloaming upon us resist, resist!"

and the chorus line of purring cats
play with prawnheads and green tree frogs

i feel myself drowning in these mists, that
smell like fresh baked chocolate cake
and i try to care,
but sleep overcomes me
and the dreams slipside away
until  i awaken
in the cooler part of the day
and recall with haziness
the heat of earlier
and the swirl of the dreams .

the cat sits, staring at me, purring,
at its feet a toy mouse,
and i smell chocolate cake,
being baked by son and husband...
all apparently  is normal
with the exception of
the irregular rhythm
of the wood windchime.

i don’t think i love you any more,
whoever you are;
i guess i talked myself out of it
like i talk myself out of impulse purchases
or loving myself fiercely.
the point is, i don’t want to go anywhere
with you, only home, alone,
even if this isn’t finished yet.

i think there’s some finality
that neither of us will reach here,
but what you’re reading is the beginning
of the end.
i’ve fallen out of love with you,
yes, i don’t think it any more,
i know it.
this is so nearly over,
the page is breathing a sigh of relief.

so i’m going home.
i’m going somewhere safe,
and the door will be locked behind me.
the bottles of wine
in the bag against my door
will windchime-beckon my arrival,
loving me far more honestly
than anything you’ve given to me
or i’ve taken from you in here.

i’m bursting the bubble that i created,
and you’re going to hate it,
but i don’t love you any more,
so i don’t think i need to destroy
what i need just to see you smile, now.
here’s me, picking up the knife,
and you’re not begging me to do anything,
you’re just staring
at whatever i’m saying
like these words are somehow real
and not present in the moment.

it’s been fun. just fun,
but i’m going home now.
whichever sense of place
i’ve tried to lay claim to
will forever be lost on a plane ticket
or a scrapbook that i won’t make,
because i’m going home, now.

i’m nearly there.