Gripped by love and gripped by death

Today the work is

Blue sky wondering

Stirring in essence and vague notions of

A future survival plan

Because the fate is always one step ahead

Frosted green astro turf type surfaces

Are slipping under us

We glide towards the future

But stagger always stopping

To look around

Notice the small stuff

Breathe in through the nose

Incense flows

Living on the frontline

It feels like

Each crab like pokes

Out the shell in

The morning dew

And duly we continue towards the point of entry

Of this morning suns

Take hell, take a time when hell did not exist

Take some twilight and spread it over a close framed neon sign

On a street that is cool and interesting

Become the idea you had

When you thought that maybe you had cancer

Through the cool trees they whisper

Smoke them out flying things

With fronds that seek to catch on

And hold fast to your ageing skein

Trees bend in the wind

Easy to understand that

What is harder to contemplate

Is the body bent double

Forcing itself against the icy internal blasts

That come in like mini hurricanes off the wastes of time.

Are those rats in the walls

Or did I just imagine the sound

When will this interminable coffee grinder

Cease to produce a filthyscum residue

That tastes so bitter

But I can’t stop drinking it.

Now the heart is racing

Now I know enough to carry on

To believe anyway without knowing any real truths at all

Except that bird that won’t stop singing

Winter Listing

There is somebody in the room

They entered the house uninvited

I do not know their name

I cannot be sure if they are welcome

It was rude not to knock

But sometimes conformity is a drag

Just let yourself in old friend

But unwelcome news we don’t need here

Just luck and a bit of light please

To warm our hearts

From the winter gloom

Please come in old friend

Come take my hand

Dance and flicker light filigree

Expect the tracery to follow us home

It is winter a memorial

Keep eat safe

it knows

treat open hearted

Surgery

In your face death

Skip lines

The Para text

The keeping guards

That close into your fist as you do everything

While you remember nothing

Like a skipping dvd

Like all that junk piled up in the back

Like the very idea of your mind

As a dump

a thought flamed up 
now becomes

A mud slide

Like the one that very nearly washed Oprah away

It was on the news today

And you thought it would all go away

It re-enters

Like some folk fool

Face pressed against the glass

Half full

Half fool

Thoughts formed in a moment

And afterwards the memory of chatter

Why not

Fugitives take flight

And how then

Becomes a mantra

Of municipal car parks, sacred amulets, rain fields

That may contain Anglo-Saxon treasure.

To coincide with news from abroad

We took the remaining boats down to the south of the island

From here clear across the archipelago

The sea had turned a petrol hue

Simple rhythm sustained us through the harsh winter months

Small clinks and rustles marked out the time

Between sunrise and nightfall

Myths and legends became our food

The library our kitchen

Piled up like a buffet

Of all you can

Eat.