Claustrophobia

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.

Passing on

When there’s no answer on Google or
Too many and too frightening and
No knowledge in your body to tell your
Bones how to do what they should

How to pull your feet up and put them
There, on the next step, without thinking
Under the rest of your spine with all its
Grand thoughts of time and catching

A sunset via a riverside path or a quick
Nip across the bridge before the rain Spills over and the supper time hunger Takes hold and what? What were you

Saying? Stretching your mind through
Each tingling finger, gingerly curled bent
To keep the shaking at arms length
Hiding from yourself the quiver that

Delivers curdled messages up the Tracks  into racks of pain dangling wee Teeth in front of a brain squeezed back into a
Blank corner, nothing on the wall now

That the..Now that the…Now that the
Heart is closing up shop and has Packed up all the memories but has left The hooks, thoughtful for the next guest.

A sigh of relief

Today I was told
That, according to new data,
The radiotherapy I had
May actually shorten
My life even more.  

There’s no turning back
There’s no switching off     
What was on
But there is always
Something science has
Yet to put her finger on.  

Cancer sidestepped the norm
Just by being born
And carries on in that vein
Plotting new ways to counteract
Natural or man-made attack.  

Let’s focus the energy, now,
Make our own gamma
Knives out of sheer love,

And when we have hacked the Radio cunning and counterproductive Reproduction with our own sweet lines,  

The bitterness of everything
Will ebb away and the
Body will breathe out

Argentine Tango

Stand alone and let someone else

Be somewhere else

For now

Time will bring them near when

Life is clear of

Clutter.

 

Now is untidy

But I’ve made a start and

Won’t

Strike off the path

With a misspent

Day of gorging and

Repentance.

Now, I know

The mess is still there

But the drunken

Guests have left.

Their dirty glasses

And cigarette ends

Tell the story of

What’s passed, but

They will be cleared

Away as surely

As that sofa’s stained

And what remains

Are memories, soft,

And hard,

And wood to be

Cut , to relight

A hearth

Long forgotten, ‘neath

Footrest, newspapers

And a tower of DVDs.