living

V.99

The world is not a game of chess –
A game of chess is not a game
sometimes it’s something more and less
When a world turns on an evening

When rain churns upon the roof tiles
and rain sounds dance inside the ear
and rain worlds are raised from the red
depths of the mind, a damp childhood.

In an oxbow lake three kids act
in a pirate film, and leap out
in the rain, to feel the warm depths
and feel roots in the dark water

touch their legs, and shiver. A fish
a dead fish bobs among the reeds
Its unused eye staring at clouds
dark with the shadow of water.

In a film a neat cottage stands
by the sea, and an old man gives
advice that, being trite, this time
because of something deep, and past

returning, brings with it a roar
like the sun checkmates the dark sea
and castles on the sand, kids hands
had made, are washed away. I love you

V.80

Memory danger. It’s a pinch.
They’re in our heads, in our bodies –
they could strike at any time. Know:
Memories are dangerous things.

They wrench our heads through time, it’s worse
even than the ground opening
and letting you plummet away,
just to jangle from side to side

from rock face to rock face – insults
raining from their mouths. “Good lord, boy,
Call that falling!? A downy scrap
of feather would do it better.

Call that hitting your head? Go on…
Pull the other one! Try again –
Oof but that was okay, good byeeee!
AND THE DARKNESS SWALLOWS YOU UP.

So, melodramatic, but yeah.
It’s like the world is scattered all
with massive invisible traps.
Bear traps with a ghost chain attached.

And then you drag the ghost around
as it complains mightily – “Please,
I’m as tired as you, my liege. But
can’t you stop that racket I’m sick”

V.58

Air raid sirens are full of dust
in a culture my ears know. Let
fail the mode of lamentation,
let us breathe in the dust we are

and be happy, let us have strength
we can direct over the form of
the book, the film, the cigarette,
the vape, the game, the small figures

we create in our new-born minds.
Let me just remember this is
pouring rain, this is paradise.
If you feel your life won’t make sense

if conditions aren’t met, forget
that, and luminesce. You may think
maybe our parents shouldn’t have
had us, knowing then what they knew

and leaving the planet in states
difficult to parse, and this holds
for all ages, and all people
in them, what a hot sin it is

to create a newborn person,
it scalds and leaves us hollowing.
But it is a great miracle
like lives and all things in their grasp

V.52

The world that reflections fall to
beneath the petrol station in
the rain – that world where things are good
how can we reach it? The world where

the chemical imbalances
are mostly corrected. In there
where people don’t get stuck. I love
all of my friends, I love you all.

But you need to go to buildings
everyday, in other cities.
Things are made difficult by this.
You need to tap at keys and make

small adjustments, and be harrassed
by parents as their children cry
and try to cope with complex stress.
There is no line. No prime matter

that would lie down beneath things and
smoothly answer questions. Like why
argent, a cross gules, prevails here?
a symbol of stupidity

flutters in the cold wind. As I
attempt to make myself think well,
reach that world dropping away now
beneath the rivers, beneath seas

V.35

I fear the dark, like anyone
that grows along the surface like
moss. Dear friend, I fear I am done
writing outside of fashion

and that is life. Lichen grows in
me, letting out its frost tendrils.
I am clean and clear throughout when
I have the better understood

moments. But to reach those I need
suns and locales I am far from.
I am out beyond the long range
of the beautiful. Juxtapose

this evening, alone, and unpained,
with an evening we knew by sea
where I had pain, yes, but also
peace. I live, now, to reach that peace.

Moss, you will note, is oft unsung.
Though it arrives first, and fastens
black rock for the later aeons
who soon forget it. I lie here

reaching for soft Erato’s hair,
or the bend of her ear, to breathe
whispers and promises of things
she wants me to do for her yet

Fate

I see possibilities arrayed
like a great flagstone path
and each flagstone has moss
and plants grow inbetween

And each flagstone is carved
from stone milled from language
the language of books and films
they are stacked about the path

And the rain and wind-grit
are giving them a hard time
so the titles have ripped off
or faded in the sun – the path

(this may be important)
only appears retroactively
that is – I can only see it
looking over my shoulder.

The path in front of me
looks clean and I am walking
but I don’t mean to be walking
through a mist from the waterfall