Moving

61 boxes

labelled and squared off

each in its space.

Each an ambassador of order

in a country of cold concrete.

My life stacked and bordered

to conform to the rectangular tyranny

of moving boxes,

warehoused and waiting.

It is time to discard everything

that has no use

sentimental weight,

battered momentoes that fade and rot,

that only give earlier days disloyal shape.

To chose and change,

throw away and cherish,

my future memories more important now

than past possesions.

Fatigue

I am tired,

but not the heavy comfortable tiredness

of a day in the mountains,

of a thousand meters

marched into the spine.

I am tired,

but not the lead bone tiredness

of a day worked alongside my father

hard physical labour

that cannot be faked.

Tired deep within,

mental metal fatigue,

molecule separating from molecule

and atom from atom.

Thin tight tiredness.

Rules that no longer work,

losing their hold.

Structures shedding stability

paint cracking,

continents of flaking reality,

taking other older surfaces with them

as they break away,

until they reveal nothing.

Shining secrets

No faking sickness in our house.

Thwarted by the twin traps

of righteous respect for education

and training as a nurse.

Only when fever burned

was the thermometer taken down

from the chaotic cupboard,

flicked into neutrality

and placed between nervous teeth

or clamped under arm.

To work its magic,

as a silver thin tale of heat in dry graduations

betrayed or comforted.

Until the day it was dropped

on the unforgiving floor,

shattering in musical fragments,

its shining center spilling.

Secrets reflected and ran,

spread and separated and joined again

in shining poison spheres,

not to be gathered

or governed.

Special effects

The screen held the image

in amateur simplicity

repeating a moment,

time restarting

again and again.

Unspectacular,

gravity reminders

brought to terrible bloom

and raining down,

the sparkling confetti of a screen

that would never again

show a film as innocent.

My ignorance of your city

spread on the map of gridded streets,

liquid soaking paper,

crawling across the fibers

as knowledge crept outward.

My fingers tapped a beeping mantra

of all your numbers

not dialed often enough

but now a digital prayer

that knew no answer.

News reduced to a single life

as it should be

until you answered

another phone

hours later

and an ocean of safety

away.

The new ice age

Silence can say goodbye

as loudly as a scream.

Frozen in the air

the nothing of nothing done

settles on skin like crystals,

fine pointy protection,

powerless powder against the

slipstream of time.

Life continues,

hidden beneath the layer

of dreams gone hard and brittle.

Movement can break the shell,

shed the skin that no longer fits

but who wants to destroy

the only thing that seems intact ?

The hollow heart still beating

or just echoes ?

Last judgement

The last that passed between us

was a leather passport holder,

a present from a long gone lover.

He held it

in grained skin that

told the ragged end of all his stories.

Wondering if it was real leather

and would it last ?

He wasn’t impressed.

I knew it was too thin,

cut to a different standard

than ruled his life

but I see it now

and the shadow of his age-gloved fingers

is on it still, just as then

when he handed it back

like a border guard,

a few inches separating

our opposite journeys.

Hearing aid

I must have listened to it

a hundred times,

playing it on repeat when I met it first

like a child eating chocolate in front of visitors,

gorging myself on the sound.

Guitars fighting for space,

the bass thrashing the truth,

while the drums paced up and down

caged inside the wire of a voice

that made you want to

kick something and hug it afterwards.

But today for a few seconds

listening to it again

I knew it like I know the taste of my own fear.

I would have drained the meaning from it

when I was seventeen

but now I’m tired

and sometimes your own songs

get louder as time goes on.

The local

My father’s local,

then as now,

the walls hung with footballers and fiddlers.

The bar unchanged

from when we sat

crisp-bribed

in an angular Ford

and waited for the conversation

to lose its bounce.

How could they talk so long ?

Knowing nothing of the alchemy

of dim light,

low words

and sudden laughter.

Welcome rain

At least it isn’t another suburban Sunday,

the city poor man carwashes my

pollen golden Toyota,

in drowsy rain.

Too much works,

everything should be broken,

and not playing being ordinary.

Red follows gold follows green,

and traffic follows traffic signs

I want universal disobedience,

a taste of breakdown

on the blunt edge of normality.

The world cooperates with personal physics

only on the rare occasions

when you read the script.

The sea

I would give you the sea,
and a switch.
So you could change at will
between the soft sandwiched sandy summer
and the washing roar
where the silence in its
white noise rush
is as comforting as the
crash of water
moving in concert
with the world.
While you walk
only the breathing
of that great grey ghost
guides you
and the air
clearer and sharper
flavoured  by a thousand
thousand upheaving moments
leaves you as lightheaded
as illegal spirits.
The slowly polished strand
is yours
and your thoughts alone.