A peculiar comedy

There is a peculiar comedy to rubbish
Drawing from us capital
A rat race to refusal
Of extinction
We are all here, criminal
Making trenches to hide the nuance
That folds us into animal
We are all here, origami children
Hemmed in at the edges
Becoming nuisance
All bring crushing impact
With a grudge to hammer home with.
Needing no rehearsal to contradict
As we lay inside this labyrinth, the matrix
Bourne by identities.

In short, we are addicts
Living at the tip.

Mr Theo Sauri

I’m becoming a civilised old chap
under the tutelage of my old pal – chum, Mr Theo Sauri
His face – countenance is grey – griseous with contempt
for the whims – vagaries of my tongue
to which he does suppose
‘The words of the devil were spawned’
I articulated to the best of my ability that I am not one to be bedevilled
to which scorn was his adequate response
though he held his tongue Thank God
for I could read in his mien, mercurial shades of distaste
standing before me, a crimson cardinal.

I bowed my reverence and thanked him thusly
for cultivating me from weed to rose
and thus I forthwith blush with prose.

Detritus & Rain

The clouds loomed low from the clothesline
hung out to dry
An omnipresent dread preached a pregnant silence
holding us awry
whorls smeared windows
trying to put our fingers on it
this thing amiss in our lives
the streets rustled with paper and plastic bags
time passing slowly, interminable
the roads wore a sheen reflecting traffic lights
nothing was astir but for white cloaks of bags willowing on the air
with long fell swoops arching as a bird
flying on the wings of an impenetrable blur
a predator in concert
a plastic pterosaur
before falling, inert.

Grief is a Crow

He’s the spirit of the greyest days
When he’s not perched on the mound
To watch the body go underground
Light glinting in his trickster eyes
He’s the jester of the skies
Sometimes, he is grief
Spiralling from the clouds
Hearts beating with the beat of his wings
Heavy is the black cloak and gown
Something sweeping us
From bare remembrance
To make us look up at the stars
While we bear our reverence
He’ll make us laugh in spite of our severence
Catwalking down the runway
With chic elegance
Feathers softening the senselessness
Grief is a crow
And crow is benevolence.

Old boot

We felt ourselves hapless victims of childhood
arms folded, sulkin’
not another five minutes to play
gotta go back to school on Monday
childhood didn’t fill our boots
so we outgrew them quicker than we meant to
I’d already been under the scalpel
chest wide open with the swirl of finger tips in gloves
digging to the heart of the matter
then sewing me back up in blue
like blue laces
knotting up my chest
the place where secrets get kept
I worried they’d seep through
now that I was a boot
what if I wasn’t weather proof?
the rain would fall and the soul of my socks would squelch
I heard the other kid died in surgery
I wondered at that, but not for too long, because I was young
but it left it’s mark
I grew up with bubblegum breath
and a sheen of tears
’cause the other kids said I was weird
I played on the street after school
I thought my friends back home thought I was cool
which was a different aspect to what I knew
in that place of learning
but they got pulled up by their ears
soon saw me for being weird
and that was that.
I felt a discarded boot
a bullseye only a target to shoot
so I ran in the woods to the river
skipped stones and became greener than my roots