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.

 To A Smile

 

Run towards subtle joy. Congratulations under glass. 

A thousand year old Quran. 

Let’s take a walk together. We three. Me and my boys. 

Into the crowded museum’s ancient aura of tourism and coffee and wooden buddhas. After the bookshop but before incense. 

Must we make the same mistakes and is it taking without giving? 

What the hell are we learning here anyway? That gold was gold is gold? 

Fashioned in stone or precious metals signifying the ticket price minus two children plus lunch. 

Forge a new future from beetles' wings and alabaster to recast failure with bitter contempt. But walk on. Breath fire. Spread joy like ashes in the air. 

 

 Flying Buddha’s Revenge & Rebirth on the Blackwater Beltway

 

Dreary below

supine beneath deep banks

loping along the essential estuarine curvature 

ripping over the horizon

let’s be homeless on acid and belt the cosmos out of here

jumping through hard loops

bending out on time 

stumbling emergent into

incomparable fissures

legions of floating unrest

solidify on your breath

curling up to floating star light

hot essential phosphorescence  

hungry for everything abject

sitting quietly

on the door step of an endless milky night.