Poetry

In Consequential

I guess your ears were burning

when you heard the hard consonant form

the scratch and scrape of it

carving itself

into the beginning of an end

feeling a flicker of regret

when you realise that acts beget their consequence

eventually

does it now make sense

that there is but a half step shift

from consonance to dissonance

rocking back and forth on the tightrope between them is not a life well lived

In consensus

An exchange necessitates truthfulness

it can be obfuscated for a while

but like a splinter in the finger

the contaminant works it way to the surface of the skin

in the fullness of time

In conclusion

an archeologist finds the treasure

apologies buried deep beneath the earth

scattered amongst long forgotten bones

Untitled

A vast plume of smoke

diffuse in the smell of embers

the tide crashing in

only to creep away again

in the dead of night

alight by the moon’s waning gibbous

its wax dripping from both ends of the candle

the mountain in the distance

hard ground underfoot has tiny sprigs of spring on it

dewdrops on young grass hang there like tiny drops of hope

Am I so very small or just far away

far away from where?

where is it i am going?

who was it i was trying to be?

the sun’s head peeking over the horizon

is either rising or descending

is this a new dawn

or the soft light of the inevitable dusk?

I was only an egg

On the surface a firm construct

But beneath the brittle frame

full of unfertilised gloop

That just a tap could crack, spill out and lose between the floorboards

Inside I have been changing

Evolving a future form

A rubber ball

Is smooth and tensile to the touch

Like muscle, can bend and contract under pressure

An infinite sphere

All edges slowly shorn

by time, tide and the weight of man

you cannot compel my shape to change

Bouncing high or low

determined by force and momentum

A limp throw will achieve little height or distance

It simply rolls away in search of arms with more investment

Motherhood

Amongst other things

Like age and grief

Have mellowed me

Malleable mush grows strength enough to carry the weight of another human being forever

I understand now

I no longer need the shield

My underneath

will not merely yield to your whim

If pushed

I rebound

A ricochet in the opposite direction

never to be seen again

Aphesis

If we are going to talk truth

Then I have a tale to tell

Let the entire story be told

Leave no stone heart unturned

I Never Linger In Doorways

I never linger in doorways

I’m either in or out

For a lot of people my in is too intense

I rarely live anywhere long

When I’m out, I’m out.

Far out, by the bins, in the wrong.

Among criminals whose heinous act was leaving

Either too noisily or quietly,

too unpredictably or predictably

permanent.

You used to have to go a long way to make me break a promise

I thought my word a vow

And I made it slavish and solemn

Today I would drop you in heartbeat

Leap out the nearest exit with no parachute

Without passing go or collecting any of my belongings from the overhead lockers

Just empty my luggage in the Atlantic

Let every tired, ill-considered garment drift

To wash up faded and misshapen on disparate shores

One night in Beveren I lost a lovely yellow scarf fleeing the scene of my wits end

I wonder sometimes if it ever got found

A glass slipper at midnight

I abandoned my favourite trousers at a bus stop in Clerkenwell

On the corner of Claremont square and Pentonville Road

Prepared to bear all to prove my point and break a box

Over time I have become an artist of escape

And increasingly able to unleash myself from anything

I only stay where, and with those, I am free to leave

I never linger in doorways.

Some Nonsense About Clarity

I speak another language

I step among stones

choose my words so carefully

like searching for perfect pebbles on the shore’s knife-edge

selecting few and rejecting many

They must be weighty, not too sharp

and never too round or dull

aiming always to keep it brief

light enough to carry

dense upon the palm

I am at a loss as to why

this never yields the desired response

Am I a superstitious lunatic inspecting my runes?

believing I can bring the rains

I make patterns in the sand

in its ubiquitous, pervasive grains

permeable to the impending sea

I stand knee deep

driveling some nonsense about clarity

in devotional tongues

stranded

sand & pebbles fall from my mouth

and the tide draws them back in to an endless churning ocean of gibberish

So Here We Are

And “so here we are” as my therapist says

to open each session

Her light Swedish lilt soothing me into a liminal state

“And how did that make you feel?”

How did it make me feel?

Well as the weeks went on the knife pierced less flesh

My heart beat 1 bpm slower

each time he appeared somewhere

A mention of his name used to floor me

And now it doesn’t

The fall became a falter became a flutter

One step, in front of the other

Away it went

And he got smaller somehow

He dwindled & diminished

And now I can laugh sometimes at the silliness of being afraid

Of him! Ha ha ha

His tiny knife, from a toolbox of pitiful tricks that only work by sleight of hand

Shit magic that only fools the already wounded

Those of us who walk among you half-made

But we can remake ourselves

Slowly stitch up the parts left fraught & fraying

And I have begun sewing suture

Strong scars across thin skin

Thread thick enough to never come undone.

Sea Air

You can think a sea breeze will cure all your ills

Escape to its briny saline moisture medically administered by air to the lungs

The promise of its endless floating freedoms

But you are only ever as free as your own mind permits

This door is a window where you sit and admire the ebb and flow beyond

You heard them say “we each are the masters of our own destiny”

But you scarcely believed it, with that grip on your wrist

The tingling tangibility of your hunter’s trist, trust up in faith you’d never let slip YOUR heart wasn’t in it

You can only ever be owned if you gift your captor ownership

The door to your mind can always be opened and closed

Be changed from a window to the whole world

You can dive deep at any moment into oblivion beyond

He doesn’t hold you

His weak grip you perceived as slack rope that could tighten at any time

You thinking a noose

doesn’t kill you till it’s taut

all danger is impending, imminent, potential

So you believe if you jumped the cliff’s edge it would catch you

But scissors and knives you never needed exist

The ultimate trap

a prison with no bars

a window without glass

The frame and nature of limitation held by nothing but air

The sea air and you could smell it all along

Poem #11

Hope is a small cut inside my cheek that my tongue continually worries at

Unseen and unspoken it lurks in the back of my mouth

It clings to intangible threads

I only want one, just one, let me have one

Let one thing be alright for once

Unsung

There is no certificate you can obtain in becoming an artist

You never applied for the position

You work in sales on a commission basis

Like sex work you sell yourself as product

You have a few testimonials from satisfied customers

But these are subjective reviews imbued with personal circumstance

They are empirical truth of nothing

The money you do or don’t make is no barometer of artistic achievement

Glittery shit sells and greatness often doesn’t

There are no catergoricals to be found in cold hard cash

You could insist the prolific nature of your output is the proof of your pudding

But you know quantity does not denote quality

Nor are they mutually exclusive

So the slimness of your cv is no signifier of success

Thus you drift denied your definitive

Like an addict only after applause

An exhibitionist enabled by audience

A crowd pleasing, precarious, conditional

Question mark

My Cutting Tongue

No one says they like the sharpness of my tongue

to be on the parched tip of it

but licked luminant by the light of a thousand forest fires

you were seared into the landscape

never so strikingly seen

lit up bright

bathed in light

may break my bone

my back

is only so strong

so straight

arches under the weight

of dragging you along

As you cling to the fraying end of my tether

for dear life

a guide rope in the dark

your dark

the one you grew with your doubt

that you carry about

With its deepening void

its vacuum

into which

every good deed must go

but never unpunished

derided and diminished

for doubt is all you know

A shadow

defined only by opposition

a negative preposition

needling, feeding on

the only light left

May you linger

in your ashes and dust

rusted by your own corrosion

may it dampen all the fires you started

fade around you

like the smoky plume of gloominess

you are

left

alone

in the

dark

longing to be scorched

upon my cutting tongue.

Poem #10

Not without fault or failure

To choose to accept change

To live in lines and in laughter

To live it all again

To live it all again

Expand the reach and range

Untethered and braver

To drift like a drop of rain

Hold the heart of a stranger

The one without the pain

The one without the pain

Gift it all away

I have a heart that harbours

I have a heart

I have a heart

That harbours

Not without fault or failure

Poems in Isolation

#One
Postpone the thought of a handshake
Or a hug
Forget the future for a moment
Actively narrow the horizon
From a line to a dot
A full stop
That begins
and ends
only
today.

Let the sun set
May it rise tomorrow
Hope for much
Expect less
Need other things
Things nearer to you
Eat only what is here
Love everyone that’s not
Love and let love a lot.

#Two
The single biggest
Lip sealed, censored
Soundless
Unspoken
Forbidden
All consuming
All or
Something and nothing
Invisible
Inexistent

When does an unspoken truth become a secret
When does a kept secret become guilty

Held forever
Like a breath

#Three
What good does it do
If we build a tree
In the middle of a town
Surrounded by traffic, noise and fumes
Suffocated in sound

Its roots
poke and protrude the pipes under the ground
Interrupting existing life
Trying to live alongside
All that is alive

Is it still an act of love
If it can barely breath
If it might not grow
If it isn’t chosen

To flourish and thrive
All green earth
Who am I to plant it here
In this dirt
To decide

#Four
Waiting is the game with you
Whether you will or won’t

You would’ve said if I had waited

My impatience impaled your intent

Your cautiousness is never cruelty but it cuts the same

A will is just words without deed

Poem #9

I do not speak subtext anymore
No longer do I wrangle with the entangled communication
If you have something to say, just say it

However unkind.
I promise not to mind more for your honesty

But don’t try to blind me with your offensive defensibility
The trick you stick with is the cruelest of slights
The slow trickle of truth from a sewn mouth
The barbed knife,
Insidious insinuation device

Regardless the work is all mine, to refuse to find the hidden messages
To change my ears and the way that I hear things
And what I take to heart.

A place of limited space must not have an open gate policy

I must finally learn that all must earn their time
For a kingdom of carefully crafted kindness

Poem #8

The Monologue

The deafening silence

The absence

The one and only echo in your lonely chamber

The slow creeping of regret

The cold sweat

The restless night

The sight of it slithering over the brow of the hill

The still of the sound

The downs

The reflection

The dissection of every word exchanged

The change that is necessary

The scale of it

The futile fight

The missed moment

The opportunity skipped over

The clipping of wings

The sound of it singing

The words endlessly ringing in

The begin again

The end

Poem #7 Notes on the Indestructible

If I cry in public

Will you believe me then?

Is the onus on me to display my vulnerability ?

Must I wear it like a badge ?

If I make myself small and weak am I then deserving of care ?

Is it the rough skin on my palms?

Is it hard to believe that words of pain are truthful from a mouth that speaks them with such assurance ?

I practice them you know

I don’t sing songs I’ve just written for fear that my crying will crush them

and I’ll never get them out

You have to pull yourself together

Or you would fall apart in front of their eyes

It is learned poise, a pretend

Strength as an artifice I made

That now I cannot end

Poem #6

Held like an unexploded bomb

At full arms stretch

a threat that must be neutralised

Restrained, Contained

A wild cat in need of neutering

A small unknowable thing

At both the centre and the edge of it all

The burning episcentre and a bit part player in the story of your own life

Unsure if you’re the factory floor

Or the silent partner haunting the halls at the top of the tower

Like Repunzal

After countless calls to let down her hair

she cuts it all off

Content to cocoon in her seclusion

This is a coffin or a chrysalis

For eithers sake

a prison break of sorts

#4 Final Words

# 3

#2 Commodity and Access

Commodity and access

You’ve come to move me around

My unmanageable, malleable demeanour

Predictably, difficulty direct

In all it’s acerbic assurance

Displeasing unreasonablenesses

Why won’t I submit

Learn some willingness

Still persisting in this path of pertinaciousness

“Take us to the light, make it alright

Do the fighting for us

Too lucky in your blessings

Too assured and you’re forgetting

You’re just commodity and access”

Poem #1

You can speak and speak

Find all your fancy ways to frame the words

But beyond the fourth wall no one is listening

Many meanings can be gleaned from the tracks of the train of your thought

You could kill yourself

trying to be understood

They can still lay the lines to bind it into lying

And you won’t even know yourself

any more

You’re too old to hold such grudges

too young to let them go

But can you be bold enough to hold your tongue this time ?

To let it all be and leave only love behind

To bend to the sway of the trees and to the warmth of the sun

And one day when you wake up with no words at all

have you lost

or have you won?