where art collides

old age beckons

Dissipation of the mind
crumbling of the body
simplification of living
shaking of unshaken beliefs
fade to credits…

Slow train, taking it’s time to go nowhere
Empty mind, staring at fields
Don’t care, how long it takes to get going
Life will, still wait for me.

The fear is four inches wide and sits by my heart.

Just down, to the right, it perches with the presence of a clutch of angry vipers tied in a ball.

They sleep; but not for long. They wake

and my life is filled again with writhing hate. As

their bodies wind together they make dark cold liquid run through my insides.

Dripping onto my stomach, provoking eruption.

They stretch down each arm, lifting with a forked lick the hairs they find there.

They turn, and now they have created gravity. A superpresent

force that inverts me, makes the fear my centre, my down, my earth.

All is now in thrall to the fear.

It wins. I orbit it.

A helpless fleshy satellite flung round for an eternity by my own folly.

High-wire
Cheesewire cuts the souls beneath my feet.
Frowning down at
Emotional account – is overdrawn.
Planning permission required
From grass-roots up;
The sky’s the limit.
Only 20 pounds and this
Is what I bought.
A drought,
A hunger –
Desperately seeking captivated audience
To catch my drift
Across a landscape,
Painted wordily in ink.

Personal Effects
And yet you still are unaffected?
I spilled not knowing –
Thick and slick –
Too slippery for me.
Humpty Dumpty.
Broken lines and fragments.
Shelling never stops.
Did I mention how high I was?
And now back home on earth,
My heights are but a fighter jet,
A mirage through the clouds.
All my thoughts are pregnant birds
That try to fly betwixt these words –
And though perhaps they’ll go unheard
They yearn to sing aloud.

Holding hands.
A piggy-bank
A childhood could not fill.

Timely intervention
Watching notes rain wet on teenage years
Discordant striking tears for fears –
Pneumonia or chill?
No gangrenous hopes,
Nor organic dreams;
All chrome and armour clad.
Wires corrode
And yet they hold
Ideas aloft, aloof and crazed
Like a preacher dressed in plaid.
To this moment complete,
Nothing may alter
A tattooed sermon never taught.
I’d like to leave this honest yoke,
Be back where I belong.
No bad egg yet the question I beg –
Would He rather a Father distraught?
Back to back
With mother moon,
All things considered
The end comes too soon.
But not yet.

This chicken run
Can’t catch my breath,
However clumsy I feel.
Wings spread to the heavens above –
Almost gracefully sometimes –
I pray but not to God;
To the gentle breeze
That carries my weight,
That I should not fall
‘Ere I reach the stars.
Air miles short,
Curtailing destined rise to fame.
Though in my heart
I feel uplifted,
Off the wall,
I feel no shame.