Hunger. The wrath of the void
Curled up inside a beacon of hope
For silence.
Sizzling Sirloin steak — medium to rare
I butcher my memories
In favour of voices telling me to move
When the heart only wants
A chair.
Sit.
Sit down. Never move.
Never move again.
The silence in the void
Of penury
After the penny dropped
Sköll yawned silently
Beneath a shrouded moon,
Driven by desire
To see another day, another way
To make the bacon last
And the hunger
— a thing of the past.
As I walk your earth I leave no shadows; no footprints on your dunes of doom. Naked skin white as snow sizzles in coconut oil. Fried frowns and dried lawns randomly left for chary craftsmen. Everyone looks of age, everyone looks away. Your forests leafy and needled; I chew and spiked memories re-emerge as new. Green grass and prickly skin, nettles and old engineless mowing machines. I walk your earth another time, another long way round, barefoot and unoccupied. Ghosts of shadows point the way through the breathing forest towards the end of day.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away a man wore many hats. One hat, then another, never two or more as one head could fit only one solitary cover. Once upon another time, in a land devoid of manners the man tried many hats, one upon the other till the head could not bare another. The neck broke and the art choked, leaving the man without a head, without a proper place to put a hat. Once upon a time, art could survive the loss of a head, the whispers of voices becoming spoken truths of stillness. Once upon a time, far far away, hats ruled our lives – in silence.
And the silence slowly spread across the land
And the low light found itself in longing pretence
And a feeble foot cursed and cussed
As an unpleasant pain broke the silence of night
– the longing and words of woe
replaced by agony from head to toe
Agony! Agony!! Agony!!!
The pain a disproportionate punishment
Agony!
for a tepid tap of toe
on another foot of cold and chrome
a crushing blow
then a howl like a hurricane at dawn
as the brittle bone broke
or the unnourished nail knew
it no longer had a home.
Silence fell. Lights dimmed.
The lonely shadow hobbled
through
the night’s final embrace
towards a brighter morning
– of pain
Ghosts: Poems in Black and White
Imbalance: Poems for Sitting Down
Bumblebee: Poems for Dark Times
I’m unlikely to fool anyone into buying my third poetry collection; publishing it on April 1 is as close as you’ll get to me revealing how I feel about the third instalment of weary words for wanting wanderers.
Bumblebee is a poetry collection for dark times. Poems to help deal with fear of being still, combatting the urge of constantly being on the move, and the consequences of being.
The Thought took flight long ago along an oral path that spanned a lifetime; but as Death came and Distortion followed the Thought morphed into another’s. Then the Thought caught the turning tide; through the ink splattered on papyrus and parchments the Thought found a final resting place at the hand of Man and the pen of the Mighty.
Bumblebee revives that ancient art of handwritten poetry that enabled not just the transfer of thought, like its oral predecessor, but also the highly individualistic expression of the poet with part clarity and part illegibility in the written. To futureproof the legibility each handwritten poem is accompanied by a state-of-the-art AI-generated* version presented in a standardised font.
(*: well, no, not really from an AI, just the poet typing on a keyboard)
Bus stop. Life stops as bus service is cancelled. Thirty-two minutes of no life asking whoever is listening why the only time I don’t check if the bus is cancelled it is cancelled. I don’t like change. Change from go to no go. Do I have ASD? Am I one of them who will get a late diagnosis? Life stopped at the bus stop. Am I the Bus without Driver? Will I be cancelled. I count each minute, and wait.
The Thought took flight long ago
along an oral path that spanned a lifetime; but as Death came and
Distortion followed the Thought morphed into another’s. Then the Thought
caught the turning tide; through the ink splattered on papyrus and
parchments the Thought found a final resting place at the hand of Man
and the pen of the Mighty.
