Dollar.

The Sun danced
a scissor across
the sky,
snipping
the clouds
from their stem.
Day’s groove skipped
and the song
sang summer
and the Sun kept dancing,
repeating noon.
As the needle
finally lifted,
returning to rest,
darkness came
and the Sun
sipped
the evening,
sat on horizon’s stool.

$

He was so
politely disdainful,
I thanked him for
his urbane condescensions.
I was in a good mood
for a week till I looked up
all of the compliments
he made to me.
Son of a bitch!

$

Objectivity
is pretending
you are not
in this boat

Objectivity is
waving your
hand at the
heaving horizon,
and calling it still.

$

Ambition.
Tell me of goals
of achievement
What do you want
to do with your life?
I want to smile at
the summer sun.

$

We have no structure in our form,
no lid will seal, we describe no edge,
no surface to the touch, no solidity,
yielding to time, we will never be
a liquid, we will always be a gas.

$

Imagine your fear,
the bravery to
face that fear,
the will that
that entails.
All that fear provokes,
the paralytic dread,
the cold sweat,
all abhorrent imaginations
whipping razors through your mind.
How courageous to still
wake up and open the door.

$

How could you know me?
You are not me,
you are you.

Podcast

I used to ride the train to town. The old station reeked of old business, it felt like school a comfortable intimidation. Settling into the dust I leaned my temple on the window, staring down at the sleepers as they gather momentum and begin to weave. I let my eyes loose two tracks become three, steel lines streaking along the ground. Snapping into consciousness, I look across at the grey, he peers across his broadsheet as he’d eye a stain upon the seat.

~_~

That bitter smell
in the florist
is the scent
of plants dying.
Blooms sipping
water from a cup.
Flowers still look alive
right after they die.
Come browse the
flower mortuary.

~_~

I poked my nose into an antiques shop, beige clutter floor to ceiling, wall to wall. My eyes took three trips around until I spotted the old lady dressed as beige clutter against the wall, her animation looked odd among the still. I asked her if she had any glass ashtrays. She said nobody buys glass ashtrays. I can see a hole in her theory.

~_~

The unknown
is as suspicious
to science as any
other religion.

~_~

Podcasts. I like the preamble, before they take the chairs, small moments in preparation, intimate pre-mask ceremonies, tuning up. Like Tom Waits said, often the best art is the unintended accidental beauty.

~_~

Spring flower’s story of hope
played in winter’s shadow

Summer blooms bleached
in the solstice high sun

Late buds tie autumn
in a pretty pink bow
fallen petals buried
under the snow.

~_~

Witnessing
a kind
teenager
is so alien

and beautiful.

Funny Peculiar.

Start the day in the fog of yesterday, that clears by ten. Work’s problems look simple in the imagination, yet the universe has got up sooner, to lay her traps. It looks like a perfectly logical solution, yet the universe finds that one percent to slip your noose. And once it slips, momentum finds the next extraordinary fluke to pull the rug from beneath tiring toes. Irritable meets weary and simple is a gag for ghosts. Teach the cupboard a lesson by breaking your hand, the universe trolls us. Patience is the only way to win.

_____

Hello crow
what do you know?
Where did you go
as we sow,
did you let
us grow, hero,
or were there
better pickings
on the road?

_____

Looking at
the waning moon,
just a sliver in
the shadow now.
I remember the flag
struck into her surface.
Ownership claimed.
Yet I still watch her
for free, all the same.

_____

We embark on a simple task, pulling at the stick at the bottom of the pile,
we live in hopes that the ones above it will stay put.

_____

The multi-talented workaholic
wonders why everyone is lazy.

_____

Chapelle is funny as hell and really cool, yet he knows he is cool, so lacks the self effacing frailty that blesses other comedians such as Rock, Hedberg, Stanhope and Pryor. Yet there is Carlin and Hicks, not exactly lacking self-importance. So anyway I don’t know where I was going with this. I like the egotist, the fragile social commentator and the surrealist. I guess the frail are more loveable, forgivable for the barbs that land close to my mask.

_____

Music is so clipped and filtered, it runs through the machine till it’s clean and lean.
All is anodyne and sterile. Movies shine like Christian teeth. Cars too, nothing to offend, just to quietly work. Even the obscene looks so shiny and pristine.
Which is why war is so much worse than ever.

Autophagy

Apathy is
so warm and cosy,
apathy has no barbs,
apathy is my blanket,
apathy keeps me
nice and empty.

_____

Each indigenous being
in every nation is despised,
like a roach stepped upon,
meant to be long past gone.
In the eyes of the pale
oppressive victor.

_____

Purpose is
a mythology
invented
to victimise
the idle.

_____

To find
the abstract,
we might spill
our drunken
thoughts
and watch how
they land as art.

_____

Human management.
It is hard to condone control.
Freedom is beautiful for the lovers,
but freedom is a key for the feral.
If all the lights lit green,
if all the lights lit red.
Nothing works but
submission.

_____

Instead of spending
all that money
on the engine,
I removed
the brakes,
to get that buzz.

_____

He lounged with
a ferocious intent
to idle the entire
evening away.

342 Pages

All the words on so many pages. Page 1 and look at how much ink there is. How much time to cross a line. The next paragraph a mile a way. I wonder of the percentage of one page in 342 pages, how many is a third. And what did that last line say. How much time to read each line twice. So pass my eyes across the lines without absorbing a thing, just to be nearer completing the book I am not reading. Just pouring it across my impatient eyes.

_____

She grew a thing, she looked at it with pride. No matter how it grew, it grew from her, that was enough for her. It spread salt on the snails and burned ants beneath the lens. It was made robust by her. No give in the pith and spat from the bridge, into the river. It grew it’s own thing, she looked at it with pride. No matter how it grew, it grew from her, that was enough, for her.

_____

The last
drop of blood
perched upon
a skeletal frame,
the snow wrote
renewal but
the blood remains.

_____

Plagiarism is
nothing new.
The branch
plagiarises
the root.

_____

Names make art
as easy as touching
canvas with pigment.

_____

A man was sat next to me, a drink under his nose. I noticed a ladybug paddling in the cup, instinctively I reached my finger into the liquid, to fetch the bug out, but the liquid thickened and pushed the bug away. It stopped moving and sank to bottom, where I noticed through the murk, more dead beetles and stagnant weed in this small rancid pond beneath his nose.

_____

She was studying
mind reading,
so attempted
to read mine.

She said that
I was thinking
her a fraud,
a charlatan.

This is how
they get you.

_____

Tom sings
a liquid line,
stir to taste a
different verse
each time.

Cantaloupe

When first created, the ipod had some love in it, carrying songs and brief notations, how many hours, how many songs, small free words. Updates added the artist’s art, but took the innocent little cuddle away with it, the whores came to sell, replacing all the charm that merely enriched the experience.

~\~

Languid the river
meandering through
the meadows in
the mountain’s view.
Chattering across
the stones
and seeping
through the soil,
soothing
the pastures
beneath the
morning dew.

~\~

When
I can’t
I want to
and when
I can
I don’t
need to.

~\~

If I
pray
the clouds
might stray
a slender
beam
of light
a plea
to shine
on me
for stars
to shine
tonight.

~\~

We abhor slavery,
but we like cheap shoes,
we are disgusted by
the animal’s suffering,
but we buy cheap food.
Karma is why we suffer.

~\~

Darkness shears cut the day, Sun’s head bowed beyond the horizon, The sky lit red bloodying the moon’s delight. Golden day’s resurrection confounds the night.

~\~

I listen
to the tune
of the universe,
I feel the panic
as the music
teases close
to resolution,
but not quite.