Why are you looking on an empty shelf?

Are you curious about hidden stuff?

Poems perhaps?

Letting go

I'm returning the keys to your chastity belt
Which you gave to me right at the start
Though you never let slip anything you felt
Or relinquished the keys to your heart

I am gifting a window of opportunity
Unlocked, to be open at last
To clear up remaining ambiguity
A portal to defenestrate the past

I feel that my purpose is ending
Something has loosened our glue
Are we broken beyond any mending?
Will quick fixes no longer do?

 Please send back under plain cover
All evidence of our intimacy
Making clear that the whole thing is over
And you're certain you no longer need me

Looking out and in

Standing at the kitchen sink
The view through the window is our back garden
It is morning, early morning
I am on lookout
Watching for cats bearing toxoplasmic gifts

Spring has provided some bright colours
But brighter still contrasting against green grass
Landfill stands defiantly above ground (for now)
Plastic chairs, toys, play equipment
As ephemeral as the flowers are seasonal
My eyes defocus, Monet is evoked

Playing in front of this impressionistic canvas
A mass of midges move up to intermingle
With the phenomena inside (or behind?) my eyes
Free falling floaters
Sometimes swimming sideways but never rising

I am fully zoned out now
Coffee in hand, mind in neutral
I refocus suddenly on my own reflection in the window
An unexpected glimpse
The central figure now, like a ghost of me,
Completes the composition

Hunker down

So you hunker down in Bunkertown
With your head up your behind
Shut your mouth, shut your eyes
Close down that unused mind
In Bunkertown size and value count
Nothing much else at all
Here security is paramount
Behind closed doors and walls

So you hunker down in Bunkertown
Keep your head up in the clouds
Whilst news feeds you ammunition
To stay far from madding crowds
And you carry on regardless
Surround yourself with stuff
Its loneliness that's hardest
When you have more than enough

So let's settle down in Bunkertown
Just outside Denialville
Because if we don't choose to be here
Someone less worthy will
Comfy as a dog in a manger
The folk who live up on the hill
Fearful of real stranger danger
And of those who just don't fit the bill

Pond Skaters

See how

We delicately tread water, hold our tongues and  grit our teeth

Mindful not to disturb whatever lies dormant beneath

For now

We are surface dwellers on the surface alone we dwell

And whilst the surface suffices, substance can go to hell

And so

We keep on skating not looking down no no no,

Fearful of glimpsing what's hidden in the murky depth below


We know

To skim on the skin is our purpose with no ambition beyond

Small specimen's in nature's big circus, confined to the top of the pond




In deep

I was basking in the shallows
When I was caught up in your slipstream
Out into deeper waters I went without thinking
Safe in your wake I did not flounder then
Please do not set me adrift here now
In this place I have been becalmed too often

The Map 'O' Mandy

Daniel was no cartographer, he lacked the expertise and specialist tools
So when he met Mandy, it was his eyes and fingers that started the joyous work of mapping her
Running over mounds, valleys, ravines and hitherto uncharted regions

To him these sorties upon her undulating landscape felt akin to the wanderings of a poet o'er hill and o'er dale
Whilst she considered his trespassing was less the ramble of romantics
and more a regiment on reconnaissance preparing to push back her boundaries
 To her, his eyes and hands were an invasive force seeking to breach her defences
However she would permit them passage...conditionally
Tacitly allowing access, rather than welcoming them in, and only then until she regained full control

After all they were occupiers not pacifiers.

So the blissfully unaware and lustily unprepared carried on their work nightly
and Mandy was ever mindful of her mother's marriage mantra:
“If he's keen enough to bed ya he should be man enough to wed ya”

Mandy outlined her terms of surrender and Daniel conceded to each and every ultimatum

Their unification should preclude complication
Co-habitation shall proceed impregnation
Fornacation only in persuit of procreation
Cooperation leading to abundant copulation
In short the facilitation of the creation
of yet another generation

With the treaty now signed he resumed his campaign
And she could not complain
Because her loss was her gain

Then when the kid was born, the map was redrawn
And all previous privilege inexplicably withdrawn

Her self imposed exile required he slept alone
Close by, but still outside of, the official exclusion zone
She kept him near, not next to, nor too far apart
With an ancient Map O' Mandy etched deep in his lonely heart