A Short Poem About Living

 

Take each day as it comes

they say

open your eyes

look around

don’t forget to breathe

ah

welcome fellow travellers

it has begun again

 The Cost of Living

 

Is an interesting phrase. What happens when you can’t afford to live?

When is check out time?

Not another list of questions.

A life that incurs debt the sinking weight.

No benefit cuts here today. More books please. 

In debt and in life.

Smiles forever.

Ashes sin and longing.

Jump onto the pyre let the vultures descend.

Escape route to the astral plain.

Meet Sun-Ra along the way, he says hi.

From his cosmic contraption burning up fumes of purple smoke.

Orbiting the east London waste lands that still exist.

Cheer up everybody he says in his curious way.

Metaphysical harmony is the order of the day.

Not right or wrong just now.

Atoms breathe.

Sun rise in outer space.

 The Owl Lives Another Year. 

 

 

This poem should not be a diary entry it should not be about how I am waiting to go to therapy.

It should not be about how the noisy exhaust pipes of boy racers disturb me to my marrow each time they fly up the street.

 

It should not be about how my thoughts race uncontrollably through my body as a sickness.

It should not be about how I love my children in a way that scares me.

It should not be about how I stare backwards with wonder and horror forgetting so much laughter along the way.

It should not be about paranoia against a backdrop of savagery.

It should not be about benefit cuts and murder.

But rather the undefinable joy that costs nothing that can be found here.

The thrill of creating something so insignificant yet so real.

The extravagance of knowledge, of knowing, of seeking out. Then sleeping.

It should be about poets for hire throwing their words to the wind.

Hot salty chips covered in curry sauce.

The hovering silhouette of a kestrel.

A new pamphlet by our favourite Cambridge fellow.

 

It should not get smothered in sentimental attachment or mired in dystopian gloom.

 

But it does.

 WHAT SEPERATES US FROM THE STREET

 

Joyful fear incline concrete bones matter

 

Pick up a new script empty old found things

 

Scatter them between us and the street smeared with

 

Everyday fluids blood piss etc

 

 

What came before will come again they say

 

Yes we are talking about the apocalypse

 

That separates us from the rolling news

 

Steam rolling its way into oblivion

 

Our favourite world 

 

A swift kick in the nuts away from the broken tarmac

 

Roots push up through patchworks of paving

 

Rejoice they say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One End of Fear

 

 

 

Poems lost in error

 

replaced with new words

 

like peace

 

and rest.

 

Let’s repaint the world outside

 

with the grief explosion of our aging hearts.

 

If we have the chance

 

to lift life’s heavy rotation 

 

can we also broach these congested roads with other journeys made?

 

Let’s take away today’s crisis vote

 

where we are willing to concede

 

that the rain is right.

 

Even if what we have done to it was wrong.

 

Excited for a silent feast that sits upon the matted mind

 

growing faster than bulbs in the dark

 

slipping over the edge

 

into the slow retrograde infinity

 

of the open mouths we need to feed.

 

 

 ROMANTIC HORROR STUDIES WORKSHOP

Each corresponding horror-scape 

Negates the previous with fresh 

Horror

Scape (s)

 

WHAT WAS IT ?

It was a reverse cat bandage

A reality brace

A black hole collapsing in on itself

An old shrew chewing an old shoe

Four thousand butterflies released from captivity

A burning city at night

Grape vines

Goose bumps

A package holiday from hell

A package holiday from heaven

Motivation just at the right time

The last chicken in the supermarket

A bumper harvest at the charity shop

A listless rainy day when you forced yourself to do yoga 

A distant figure on the marshes possibly tripping on acid

Last night’s washing up glistening in the sink

Tina the cat meowing at 5.30 am

Mist and fog our favourites

Will there be another pandemic?

Do we need flu jabs?

But what was it?

 A LITTLE BIT OF ENCOURAGEMENT

 

Is all it takes

whipped cream dreams ascend into the afternoon.

And what is the total cost of children?

And the meteorological data, do we have this?

The snake skin life behind us

The pasts all dodging each other crossing over the road to avoid awkward confrontations the street signs that were once important now gone.

Is it the gravity of age suddenly so heavy

that hurts our shoulders restricts our breathing?

 Cold songs haunted

cloud memories 

               the blinking of a traffic light eye.