your favourite stranger

Its always the same. The snow starts to fall and he recoils, screws up his face and takes two steps back from the window. He leaves us wondering what went wrong between him and that charmed white visitor. When did they fall out - and what was said?

Maybe its a matter of weight. He is so solid, so bound to the earth beneath him. He cannot grasp her delight at drifting slowly down from somewhere so high. Maybe its all to do with colour. Or her silence of colour. One as highly patterned as he - all definite swirls of brown and yellow and green - must be disappointed in someone so pale, so vague. Or maybe its her coldness where he is heat. A rock drawn from a fire now extinguished but still smouldering - we hold our hands against him to warm us through these winters that she weaves.

We may never know his reasons - so we stand, mesmerised, watching him watching her - till snow turns to rain and he turns to go.

fractured elegies

We live with stained glass minds. Medieval minds. All individual pieces and improbable angles. Colours that huddle together to create stylised images of who we want to be. Forever chasing see-through heroes greater than you or me.

Melted minds. Childrens minds. Bright and bold like butterflies that flew too near the sun. Curtains hung in windows near the atom bomb.

Maddened minds. Fragments held together by leaden lines. Time held tight in a rickety frame. Overly weighty and overly thick - we let little light through. Just enough to cast ragged rainbows that slide in daily repetition across your floor.

we fall through water

Give me one hundred words.
I’ll give you a girl
writing stories in the sand
that you walk across
from here to there.

Words you wont notice.
Words the tide carries away.
A girl with feathers in her hair -
writing about you because
she thinks enough to care
to scratch your story there.

A girl who writes
with a twig, broken from a tree
that she grew all by herself -
a twig so rough and splintered
but still held so tightly -

a twig with a leaf attached -
a leaf that sometimes
I think could be me.

the collector

answers badges books bruises butterflies buttons cards cares cars cassettes choices diamonds disappointments doubts dreams effigies enemies erasers facts fears feathers friends hopes ideas insects leaves lines links matchsticks memories nightmares ornaments patches pencils photos postcards posters punctures questions regrets scares scars shadows shells spoons stamps tattoos teeth wishes

red tears are shed on grey

go outside to find the middle of nowhere

She asked me to look at the world differently. She asked me to squint. She asked me to take apart my surroundings blink by blink.

She was wrong. This is commonplace. We never see the maddening loop in its entirety. We greet each moment in isolation - unconnected from the one before. The present merely greases the way for the future, while the past whispers inadequacies in its ear.

‘the past has no significance and the future can’t be pictured’ Amanda Claybaugh

We are cameras. Primed and snap happy. We find peace if we accept that we hold only pieces - if we learn to value the single frame.

Like the man who takes photos of his sky. Day after day, with only the colour and the light changing. The same sky, the same skyline, the same sigh.

scream of consciousness

I taste the woods in my mouth - in my breathing in - in my breathing out - little pieces of me - lost in my breathing out - a little more each time

I taste the woods - I taste them growing - I taste them burning - the way the embers fell against your skin - the way they caught in your fur - the way I was you and he was her

I taste - smouldering ghosts - charred remains of beings destroyed - animal memory - held by heat - the afterburn - the flashfire - where they run - where they hide

you know why

the sunflowers died
when only yesterday
they shined

the puddle ripples
an endless
goodbye