deadline

 deadline

see the tide’s reach 

see its deadline for today

well it will be there tomorrow 

but an hour later

you see

the sea is in no rush

it has eternity ahead 

if your deadline is to it

you have missed it

you see

it doesn’t miss you not one iota

after a funeral he wrote

 after a funeral he wrote

gone is a long word

it takes time to mature

it is a callus that will ooze 

eventually the thorn will bleed

and blind steps will startle the day

into being

gone

words with jam and cream

 words with jam and cream

drunk on words

and this early in the day

time for morning coffee and a scone

with clotted cream and strawberry jam

on a deckchair under a tree in the orchard

where the words drop like wasps

and the clouds 

and the river 

move ever so

go away ~ will you

 go away ~ will you 

each opening of the wound

each pouring forth of the self’s

secret abscesses 

each bleeding of

the river of sunset flowing from

a secret heart

each snarled word

a cats clawed arched back

sending a friend’s approach reeling 

back against the wall 

fumbling for the secret latch

dearth

 dearth

and yet it is nothing

even the word death itself is nothing

no more than a dust storm that

when each speck settles does not exist

death is nothing writing something about nothing

when the mirage called life is but a dry oasis 

distance closes in

the unknown becomes unknowable 

po ahem

 po ahem

for a poet

each poem pixelates the picture

of a world in the turmoil

on the journey between cradle and grave

each a bungee jump between past and present 

resolving into a voice crying

woe is the future

each word in this poem

a piton in the cliff face to the sun

indigestible

indigestible 

everything inside

is really still part of the outside

we are nothing at all

except the outside wrapped around itself

so that it appears to be an inside

like the möbius curve 

like a fart is but a collection of the outside

escaping from itself 

the narrator

 the narrator

the narrator was an echo after all

all my thoughts spouting

that the narrator was stupid

have spun me around

i am nothing more than the dancer

on a turntable in a music box

unwind the narrator said

unwind unwind the echo said

so i did 

and all went quiet

listen

echo is playing our tune

it’s all or nothing at all

 it’s all or nothing at all

it’s nothing at all

and not worth thinking about at all

nothing at all

the fact that we can think is quite something

i think 

you are not saying anything

at all

nothing at all

it’s all nothing

and not worth thinking about at all

nothing at all

the fact that we can think is quite something

i think 

you are not saying anything

at all

nothing at all

climacteric change

 climacteric change

climacteric they call it

a word that stops the flow of words

peri sounds a bit like petri (you dish)

or petrified of turning to the stone of a

cold analysis that is next to bloody(less) useless

ovulation an awful notion of no more

no more the possibility that a parallel universe

will pop into existence in a waiting womb 

for the waiting is over

it might as well be climate change

these heated tears that run 

where nothing else does

for these latter days have begun 

my child

you tell me

that delicate blue

 that delicate blue

of the salt bag that used to be in a crisp packet

the drippings from the blue-bag that mum whitened shirts with 

a late summer lobelia going slowly over

the blue gap in a dark sky moving east

tales from the willow pattern plate at high tea

the eyes of an imagined lover beneath blonde hair

the pale blue pallor of a bee-drained lavender bush

or the coy blue of a sage flower in the corner of a garden

or the coy blue of a rosemary flower in the corner of a garden

or the coy blue of this poem like the best tea towel 

the band on a rower’s boater hot in the sunshine

the unblink of a carp’s scales in a turning 

illusive as a blue shadow in a dazzling gown

the pale blue of the word delicate in a sad parting

that delicate blue

just after the sun sets

in a baby’s eyes

that delicate blue

she’s the cat’s mother

 she’s the cat’s mother

the cat wants to go out

i ask you to let her out

you don’t let her out

so i get up to let her out

she doesn’t want to go out

the definition of …. 

conspiracy 

inclemently

 inclemently 

then 

there are walls

everywhere you look 

you see where the rain has been

then 

if you walk far enough

there are the fields

that drank the rain under the sky

then

the longing returns

for the walls for the balustrade 

where else

can one shelter from 

thoughts

that reign

incessantly 

under the stairs in the museum

 under the stairs in the museum

the butterfly’s tray

the beetle’s tray

static upon the pins

of time’s enfilade

fading iridescence 

who pinned them thus and why

and what do they say  

wrapped in the camphor of

time’s tales of olden days

secreted in their cabinets of draws

down where the sun doesn’t shine

no more upon their sad colours

where stasis reigns sublime

one after another

the drawers open and close

a child is torn speechless

and turns to run out and out

out across the sun’s meadows

to catch that illusive memory

dancing on the head of a pin