These feel like the end days
Of life. The sun, the moon,
The clouds that move, the
Train that stops at every stop
And then goes back again.
The cyclists in the queue
At the traffic lights, leading
South. How long it feels, this
March to death, this mess of
Locks and wheels and limbs
That we call civilisation. How
Vile the stench of sweating
Plastic and half-eaten sandwiches
Discarded in the wrong section
Of the bin, into general rubbish
As many ripples and visions
Of blueness as there are
Waves breaking
All loves,
Ever felt in this life
And the past and the next,
A distillation
Of moments that flip
The guts into a vortex of
Deepness never seen,
Never heard; only known,
Only now, no choice.
The force.
What do we do when there
Is no space to breathe?
When our lungs can’t hold
The water in our eyes
And it comes rushing
Out amongst these
Crocodiles that bite
Us. There’s no such thing
As love, our limbs think,
As our blood cracks back,
Retreats into our heart,
For home, but the door
Is locked and the ventricles
Glare back, blank
Windows harbouring the
Eternity of Death
That lurks behind
Every breath. Ready
To pounce out like
a cat released to go
Hunting in the bird-
Filled night that
Quacks around us in
A cacophony of quarks
We can’t decipher as
Our hands go numb
With stress and our
Hips contract around
Our basal strength
As it pours out
Uncontrollably and
Meanwhile where is
The chair? We haven’t
Sat down for so long
We can’t remember
What rest means.
Be still, remember
It is always there
However far away
It seems, if we
Just stop to reclaim
The space around each breath.
The season of shimmering bliss when
Earth rusks die down and the
Skies weep their burden and the
Roads sing with winds that break
The torments of the dark into tatters
Of thunder that lighten the lid
Of winter marching on towards the
Final days of the year, where intentions
Meet reality and greet and light
The darkness for a short strip of
Life, the grey large silence, wider
Than the horizon, at the rise of new year
And so the rain beats comfy in the gut
Snuggled up in itself and rounded
Out like a loud joint creaking in the
Wind that feeds the curls of wayward hair
And births the life of thoughts that
Migrate like enterprising robins through
The ruts of energy that cool the livers over heated blood cells in a maze of
Wicked swirling craves that pace up and down the corners of the cell that sits in the final of the labyrinth seat of real truth
The collection of eaves that make up me that could at any minute exchange space with you or it or they that make up
You or someone and something else into a string of nothingness that is as true, although intangible like the feeing of a
Prayer soaked up on a day when pennies were raining, pitter patter, patter pitter, on the window pane.
Am I my body? Am I my pain?
Look back at a feint siesta
With nostalgia for a time
On the past that is living now but
Inaccessible to me
That is not a ghost but
A living thing as real as
The past was real at the time
Is now somehow breathed in the air of a
Future unsent but unsealed
That breathes back to me stranded here
Constantly in the now that knows no limit
But can never be found as it
Spins me round its vortex in
A hundred overlapping ways that cancel
Each other out in a loud crash as
Silent as the big bang must be all these
Years ago again in my mind eye.
What is it when we light that candle in every digit of our left hand that knew no difference between the fingers before we stretched every one with that first song book, those first song-lines,
A spider’s web stretched out along the page with flies caught on some of the rungs, some with their wings still in tact, some twinned up, some alone with a little speck of dust to confuse us. Twang
Twang they go as we see them in our fingers as we make them bold again in our brush strokes, strong, gentle strong as we throng together the little creatures on the page, back to the music whence they came.
