I dipped my hand
in a cold stream of lamplight
my hand came out
dripping with tiny wings

I held a flock of new friends
spotted brown and gray

I was told there was a time
when friendships
mended broken things,

so what truth is there
in all these unexpected conclusions?

You might be the most
adequately fashioned,
but no ticking clock ever held the
mastery of time;

what are we today,
if not fragments of all
we ever were.

He's fallen for it again,
after swearing by God's book,
his rogue mouth would halt
it's yearly stuff-athon.

Yet he's once more replete,
no, bursting forth, stuffed like
a Christmas bird; crackling,
cherries, berries,coat his lips,
cheeses of all description on
his plate and his tiny mouth
is doing its best to devour
it all.

poem body
gleaning and dusted
cretin finish
from a luster proletariat bohemian

rolls well
greased with vodka
and nicotine
cafienne and tragic love

but ive given up the ghosts
and lived in the ruins
leaning on the doorframe
with a sardonic sanctimonious
grin

my Olivetti in the corner
onionskin like parchment
and a fresh roll of ink ribbon
from staples

my new celly from the step
kid

Silence whispers
i can not understand

the bare tree
is significant

it knows.

I was balanced
between grief and rage
anger tore at me
sadness overwhelmed

I begged god for release
praying for forgiveness
absence haunted and yes
it was all about me me me

why me? but then why not
gazing further I saw the end
nudging at minutes
moving hours

I reconciled with death
fighting and hiding
sparring and parrying
my pain was married

it’s about living and knowing
to have the grace to concede
it was never about winning
but the struggle to survive

I Cry

What’s that you say I cannot write?
What the hell, you are talking shite
I have joined up words from the age of four
I still have love letters from her next door

Did you think she wouldn't write to me?
If I was illiterate don’t you see
She was lovely with golden curls
Much better than all the other girls

Oh! It’s my poetry you cannot stand
Oh! Well, why don’t you give me a hand
There are people in the world
Also many throughout this land

Now it's past history
the mystery 
of what its all about, 
was it about,
were we about,
and why we are about it,
and while we're about it
I shall say it out loud: 

Christmas has passed us by,
by the by,
and here we still are,
by the way,
yes we are.

There's always a sigh 
after celebrations, 
a kind of eerie silence, 
not necessarily beautiful, 
just fact. 

The thought of too much sun
is enough to dry my inelegant
years down to a red soil.
For in that heated world where
you fidget within your own
heart's laager, listening to the lonely
squatting syllables of a war dance,
there is no seasoning to the
feast in your mind's migrations.

The necessary travel that you undertake
as a benevolent foreigner to serve the
benighted "us" is a pilgrimage around
your own small camp fire.

What do you want of me?
I have years to pull on
Not for all my life,
did I sit in comfort without strife
I have felt the hunger
Hunger for food
For many other things
That at the time things were severe
Yet here I am after many years