Under an all-consuming sun
I was melting into a puddle,
ignoring the illusion of structure
and returning to liquid again
Muscles and bones became water.
I knew in time I would seep
into the welcoming earth
or else evaporate into a cloud.
I tried to grab my arm
to pinch myself, but useless
fingers flowed into waterfalls,
denying the last escape.
So panic left me as steam.
As the last of me dissolved
I became calm, like the surface
of a lake on a still day.
Our rent is always rising
and wages are always falling
Libraries are always closing
While the rich get richer
There’s no truth in speeches
No meaning in headlines
No beauty in a tweet.
Businesses are always stealing
Moments are always fleeting
Power is always corrupting
While the mercury rises.
There’s no truth in images
No meaning in words
No beauty in concrete
But it’s your hand I’m holding
And there’s freedom in dreaming
Its your smile I’m seeing
When I’m waking, first thing.
There’s truth...
We ran from malevolent heat,
abandoning hollow skeleton
skyscrapers back to the sands.
Now, occasional car roofs are shiny
islands, hotel lobbies lie half
buried, billboards are bleached
and peeling like burnt skin.
Even here, as far north as we
could get, the air is arid.
Water is a sometimes blessing.
Someday soon we will lie down,
transmute our flimsy bodies
into sand. Atoms of ourselves
will circumnavigate the globe
In great dust storms. We will
become diffuse and settle in dunes.
Earth will...
The mists rolled in from the ocean
quicker than any tidal wave,
shrouding the shore in confusion.
In seconds unaware sunbathers
were swallowed up by cloud.
And my mind was submerged.
Neurons eaten by the fog. I was
unable to see my hands
or anything, except a constant
wispy grey. I cannot know how long
I was lost or how deep I sunk,
forgotten by light. Hours or centuries
until I emerged, lying in bed,
confused by the gentle fingers of
the sunrise stroking my cheek,
Sitting on the edge
legs over nothing
abstract ground below
my head tumbling
not too high for vertigo
no decision made
falling
forward into air
Sixty seconds of freefall
landing on welcome ground
legs made of sponge
shaking in relief
Night always falls
I’m still plummeting
moments rushing past,
cold bright, unknowable
if I ever look down
the same giddiness
as the oncoming future
rushes up to meet me
We lost you there momentarily.
You rambled outside the borders
of yourself. There is no map,
no GPS to locate your lost
and wandering thoughts.
Where do we go in those inbetween
times? It was only a minute,
maybe two. One moment at your desk,
the next outside, sitting by a tree.
Where did your mind roam, while your
body navigated the world blind?
Welcome back from the unknown.
Have a look around, it’s all yours.
Each second created sparkling new.
A discovery hidden in each...
In the dissonant hours, when clouds
envelop you, when your feet are lead,
when the city is monochrome,
grab my hand tight and together
we will forget about gravity,
(the rules are merely optional)
and saunter together into the sky
to conga above the clouds.
Our flight will be in technicolour.
No longer constrained, we will strut
and hop, leave behind the stratosphere
and pirouette between the stars.
Spinning, dancing aerialists on
invisible wires, barely noticing
the breeze. How different the
world must seem, suspended
on the strongest nothing.
You twirl and whirl in mid-air,
crawling on a sunbeam.
Gravity is nothing to you.
I watch you retreat to
forgotten corners, where
you will weave intricate traps,
watching the room with
eight unblinking eyes.
I shall leave you to spin your
patterns and clear out the flies.
Let vines, grass and leaves
wrap around the concrete,
work fine tendrils into cracks.
Let new life blanket our buses.
Fauna will reclaim the streets,
swallow our bricks and tiles
in a slow, relentless grip,
taking decades for demolition.
This land was never ours to own,
we were just renting these acres.
Let cities be fresh air factories again.
Abandon houses to abundant green.
The clouds have been kind for once.
I have no other choice than to lie
in a field and let the sun dry me out.
This moment hangs. Birds hover,
suspended instead of swooping.
Luxuriating in the magnificence
of just being, I half close my eyes.
In the edges of my weak vision,
uncountable universes multiply
trillions spinning from every second,
slight variations on every rule.
Where this pleasant sun burns
too fast and too bright. Where I am in this
same field but with a...
10- A diplomatic communication is mistranslated.
9- A chemical plant triples its production.
8- Grass continues to grow, stubbornly ignorant.
7- In a small country, a single bullet is fired.
6- Denial, lies, confusion. More denial, more lies, more confusion.
5- I try to do nothing but inhale and exhale slowly.
4- The pavements are buried under a blizzard of newspaper.
3- Everyone is shouting but words have been forgotten.
2- A hawk hovers above the motorway, waiting to strike.
1- Without speaking, we agree to stay in bed....
One fine, excessively pleasant morning
where Cirrius Unicus clouds were perfectly
placed over an azure sky, the colour of course,
[I’m lost and frightened]
caused by Rayleigh scattering in the upper atmosphere
first proposed by Lord Rayleigh in the year 1871
AD, and which is similar but not the same as
the Tyndall effect, discovered by John Tyndall
[like a child without it’s parent]
in 1860 AD, who used a tube of gases to simulate
the sky and discovered the wavelengths scattering
[trapped in a dark forest]
and it was under this...
I throw scrawled notebook pages
into the welcoming hands of the wind.
Radio tuned to static, droning
sound of the cosmic background radiation.
The direction of the breeze is unknown,
Chaos emerging from simple rules.
Occasionally, ticker tape cannons explode,
gold and silver cascade in random paths.
I have been carried by circumstance,
destinations visited by a roll of the dice.
Planets and galaxies are just seeds
clumped together, growing where they land.
My thoughts are carried over the fields
away from me and into the air beyond.
I had been sleeping in segments
like an essay you can’t concentrate on
and write in sloppy short paragraphs
before stopping. I was inbetween waking
and dreaming most days, half asleep
in the day, half awake at night.
That one night I must have been asleep
although I felt wide awake and wired.
My vision was engulfed in brightness;
beautiful vision of shock and awe,
hideous in its consuming beauty.
I knew, instinctively, like pulling
your hand from the fire, this was
a Being five dimensions...
Try to improve my mood
Ignore the constant smog