Here

"... Anything could happen."

Feeling open

     Clean

     Renewed

With a deceiving

And unappealing

Appearance.

"Yer gotta start somewhere." -- Bartender

"... passport? Passport?" -- a thin twenty-thing "from New Zealand"

They're young.

Nobody ever knows that they're young.

But they all know that they were.

I know that I was.

Don't you?

A turn takes place

From knowing what we will be

To knowing what we were

But we're always so sure about it.

We see ourselves in others

But in the mirror

It's a different story

Until

Sometimes

We have one of those days

When we're done listening to our

     Past self telling our present self

     What our future self will be

And we just watch

As though we've never told ourselves

     Anything ever before

And we just listen

As though the Universe is right.

Compassion Inverted

Wings released and grubs abandoned, you finally set off again on that bright air and flat stone that had some time ago lost its secret sweetness but was nonetheless still that familiar, leaden challenge that now plummeted to... a thorn? No, to itself, pointing to its spindle, alleging, “This is you,” watching your softness puncture, recognising vinegar blood, and so seeing its own.

Disgust

I came home and saw myself in the mirror.
I understand if you don’t want to see me again.
I’m a failure of humanity,
Or perhaps a success.

Year Three Spelling Test

Number five.  Neighbour.  My neighbour used to think that she had a pet flying unicorn.  Neighbour.  Number six.  Umbrella.  My neighbour was very sad when she found out that her imaginary pet flying unicorn wasn't real; so, I got a horse, stuck an umbrella to its head and gave it to her to make her feel better.  Umbrella.  Number seven.  Transport.  My neighbour's favourite mode of transport now is via umbrellacorn.  Transport.

Fire

Only just green,
the new vine wide-eyedly sprouts,
bursting freely – ready to soak up the world –
from its nursery-for-one.

A tangible shadow,
sculpted by the wake of the
tiny, guiding torch light
that bore the nursery exit,

the vine trails that little flame
that senses which way is forward,
that sweetly burns and turns
only through kindling so dead

that it is unborn, unseen, until
subsumed, in the moment that a
wave peaks, by that luminous speck
before settling freshly aglow amongst

the rest of the now greener flesh
map of countless past frontiers
of revival – a comet’s tail – still
glimmering with always scarcer

reflected rays from the astral bead
up ahead that winds on, following its
kindling path, its pace imperceptibly,
gradually slowing as it unnoticeably

loses its breadth, as though the beats
of its heart have been left behind one
by one and – as mud never knows
thirst – without ever knowing hunger,

but still contendedly depending on
finding its fuel, which, to the left,
is not yet but soon will be prime
and must wait to become green,

while vapour departs the soil below 
and the lambent rondure slightly,
steadily, softly recedes into itself 
until even the very death that was

there to the left has faded, its echoes
long lost, leaving a blind and ready
silence that now touches then joins
then blazes then flows into the wake,

anointed, green, candescent, resting,
soon to be companioned by that
almost ripe, almost bare blot of
cosmic decay to the right once it

too sheds every last flake, not of
life, but of death; once it returns
to the pure blackness that sits at
the bottom of every one of your

outward breaths.

Only half done...

Contemporary Messiah

Perfectly in orbit and permeated with the grace of its own gravity, it welcomes every wave and particle that comes its way without exception, orders them all intricately, symphonically, and so reflects only the beauty and true greatness that the outside already had.

Form

Wide eyes jab my bright flag well into this manure mountain's peak, for what ever grew from a silver platter? A burdensome load is invariably a sack of diamonds. No redwood ever resented its soil.