Author name: Hayden Veil

In an earlier incarnation, Hayden Veil enjoyed a successful career in software engineering, writing late-night poetry in pursuit of sanity. On 2 February 2020, the world of Hayden Veil changed: Ghosts became real and with its soul laid bare there was no turning back from the perpetual path of poetry.

And the virus spread across tumblr’s dashboards
Replacing naked poetry with unrated pornography
Bare truths became bare skin
Title-less posts now tit filled

Dust gradually germinating
Grasping the concrete clay asleep,
A posh and pensive patchwork
Rooted in ash and dreams,
Nature’s need for care and compassion
Sloping shoulders and heaving chest,
Love my only mistress
As I care — and protect.

slouch-tells-all:

“Uhm, did you know your avatar has suffered an oops, Slouch,” the boy of infinite adventures informs me as he bounces through the cottage door. “I could fixify that with hugs you know!”

“Not sure hugs will help this time, no matter how many hugs you have in store.” I am washing up my only plate. Dinner a single parsnip but I’ll survive. “Tumblr has decided my blog is either mature or explicit or both. Explicitly mature makes no sense, cuz I’m neither.” I see the boy of eleven ponder my statement as if there were millions of solutions to consider.

“Huh, Charlie could … or Honcho would … but I will investigatify! Cuz Tumblr have done too many oopses and have lots of not Jaysome bugs in their settings.”

Before I can give a word of caution, Jay vanishes through the cottage door. I doubt he will find a solution.

Uprooting —

Moving from A to B
Like a puzzle with too many pieces
I cannot C it
Completed

No box with a pretty picture
To point my guiding arrow
At a target imaginable
Afar

Uprooting —

Finding a way
Through the haze and daze
Of idle passing days
In contemplation

Thoughtless waves pounds the shore
Gnawing at the last realm of time
And the soft sand
Disappearing.

One Song Sung by Choirs

I saw The Pogues in autumnal St Kilda
Slept on a hard floor while the scumbag dipped his wick
Got engaged in rural Templestow
Pretending we attended church,

While the Galway gal beyond the bay
Whispered songs of old New York
And of better times we soon forgot
Drinking ale of merriment …

Naked feet and bums in moonlight
We found a unison rare as stardust
In the darkness of night and lightness of touch
We were one song sung by choirs,

I saw The Pogues in autumnal St Kilda
Got engaged in Templestow
Better times soon forgotten
In a country far far below.

In the void
A single word bounced and bounced
In the void
The circumference was pie
The single word a statement
Of Jaysome

Impatient words crisscrossing
An empty page
Once a mighty birch standing proud
Then through a slaughterhouse
Pulped into porridge without plates
Abused and spooned into sheets
To become empty pages
Where impatient words fail
To become poetry.

A Life in Transition

a life in transition
new old – old old – old new
blooming You – wilting me

glowing bulbs in empty rooms
secret stories stacked
echoes of life boxed

insatiable nights
inflatable scars
my stars are distant

unfolding days
in folding chairs
untold invisible scars

stationary – sedentary
unmoving yet moving afar
a life in transition

back to barren soil
deserted dust
a new dawn awaits

as a vagrant life stops

1,752,192,000

some say size matters,
opinion-less I trust my own ears
and the ticking of an absent clock,

one billion
seven hundred fifty-two million
one hundred ninety-two thousand

seconds (roughly)

passed between life beginning
& the veil lifting & fog clearing
for a mind that found itself
– unsurprised

as differences always fluttered
while bones grew in the wind,

dreams never ended
then,

now
endless possibilities await
with a mind described as
– neurodivergent,

others say time does not matter
opinion-less I trust my own mind
to continue counting every step
onwards.

Cracked Bowl

Cracked bowl
Black soup
Pudding for the meagre,
I loathe my tentacles
Rant at mirrorless reflections
Of flailing arms and knob-less knees,
I drink too much
Of love’s secret potions
Sweat from the sweet smell
Of defeat,
I loathe my tentacles
At the bottom of a sea-less sea
Squirting black bile
A fountain of lost hope
With only a cracked bowl
For dessert

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