A75

Before the blackout

Take flight

Leave spindle branches

Silhouetted in grey cold

To the air beyond.

From above, see

patchwork division

Land cut up

Sliced into pieces

Tamed and penned

Glide on the currents

Over hillsides

Crag and boulder

Defying mastery

A cold defiance

You seek death

Discovering the prize

Winter’s meal

Jet black ink drop

Falling to earth.

Saturday nite takeaway

On the tipping point of the scale
There is balance.
Here you find equilibrium

Lying between exhaustion and recovery
Between enthusiasm and hopelessness.
Cocooned in darkness.

In the journey there is a prospect
gold may lie in wait
Peace maybe found.

Track

The jet engine and the trees
Shadows of birds
A little forgotten island
The middle of the road
A hollow. Sheltered
The traffic lullabye
Monoxide dreams
Never silence.
Never darkness.
Always alone

By the bed

A pile of books looming.
A series of flirtatious moments
Some went further, several dates.
But they weren't the one

More like, it wasn't them, it was you.
You're just not in the right space right now
Forever distracted
Always fearful of silence

Looking to drown your thoughts
Not able to listen.
The book pile grows.

The more new starts you have
The more depressing it is to be back in the same place
Just in the shade of a longer shadow.

Laughing crows eye you hungrily

Forever draining but never dry
Airbrush sprayed. Fawn and dead red brown.
Imitated by camouflage.
This is the real thing.
In frozen colour drained grey
Shot through by distant godly memory of summer
Wheel specks of feathered dust.
Everything below is stunted and slowed.
Frozen and thawed.
Clinging on.

Hiding

The machine will not stop.
lights keep flashing
Pistons thumping
Churning out
Junk

They keep building
Brick on brick on brick
Ever taller
Wider
Capacious

We have gathered
And hunted
Standing
Surrounded
By our kills

The cruelty of boredom
Is corrosive
Flames
need a spark
To ignite

Calder

The mist is low over the valley

Concrete grey walls entomb us all.

Even the incomers

With their bunting

And better ways

Of living better lives

Feel the dread

Of living with yourself