From the trees

The sycamore girl

Always in freefall -
she tumbles
through another autumn
more brittle that the last.

And wraps her dreams
in brown paper -
only to watch them grow
soft in the rain.

Concrete monsters

These are the witches
that wake at dusk,
that rise six metres high.
Eyeless angels
with neon smiles -


that bleach the day,
sucking colour,
only to throw down pools
of orange glow -

that the big girls run to.
While the little girls
play hopscotch through
a night of wolves
and rapists.

the way you miss the sea

Things you expect to stop - buses, childhood, sentences, pain, warnings, falling, clocks


Things you dont - breathing, dreams, rain, reflection, love, tears, clocks


'After a while you learn that everything stops.' Bret Easton Ellis

everytime she sneezes I believe its love

Innocent, imperative he asks why we are compelled to listen to music.

This is a valid question. This is something everyone I know considers. And as he says, we know that -

‘Music gets under one’s skin and behind one’s defences in a way that nothing else does.’ Jerry Fodor

We have all courted the virus, breathed in the sneeze. Knocked down our barricades, and invited the wolf to tea.

He suggests -

‘that it’s among the charms of music that it seems to be so utterly useless.’ Jerry Fodor

Pleasure for pleasures sake. Not a means to an end, but an end itself.

But also something more. A reminder - sometimes subtle, sometimes not so - a pinch, or a scratch that almost bleeds. We are alive - just - in a world determined to constantly remind us that we are very nearly dead.

they view the world, they pick at the holes

Apparently the Great Wall of China was built in parts by groups of workers.

‘…many great gaps were left, which were only filled in gradually and bit by bit, some indeed, not till after the official announcement that the wall was finished. In fact it is said that there are gaps which have never been filled in at all… and which cannot be verified, at least by any single man with his own eyes and judgement, on account of the extent of the structure.’ Kafka

We are walls. We meander through life, looking for holes that we know are there, if only we could find them. Before and behind - holes are our weakness - holes that undermine our entirety, that let our enemies through. We need surveyors to stand afar and point to our holes. We need an endless supply of bricks to try to fix them.

Introducing Forsyth

Please welcome Forsyth - the latest visitor to join our happy home.

Phrenology - The study of the shape and protuberances of the skull, based on the now discredited belief that they reveal character and mental capacity.

Initial explorations suggest tendencies to perfection, secretiveness, and love of the home.

Or maybe its just a result of 33 years of banging my head against the wall.

on in/significance

An attempt to find ones own place within a greater significance. To see the letters of your name trapped under the feathers of a birds wing, at rest or in flight. To hear disappointments repeated in the stones that grumble, thrown by the tide, again and again against the beach. To see hope sparkle, just for a second as sunlight catches moving glass. Rarer, to sense love - a snowflake, shadowed, falling before a full moon - casting a fortune set to melt by morning.

they shine for you

I'm reading Peter Pan, which I never did as a child. I now know I wouldnt have understood or appreciated it if I had.

A few years ago I read a Japanese book about Lao Tsu and modern physics - ever since I have felt nervous of stars, of what they are and what they are up to.

This paragraph may have calmed my fears.

"Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glass-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder." J.M. Barrie

So now I think about whether I am an older star or a little one...

With thanks to Escher

An empty box asking for a name for my blog, I looked around and on my Escher calendar saw his quote for tomorrow -

"It sometimes seems to me that we are all afflicted with an urge and possessed by a longing for the impossible" MC Escher

He only has something to say at weekends, unlike me.

Another box asking for a site name, I recalled an old haiku -

tessellating fish
head fits tail fits fin
marine infinity dream j.e.m.