Travelling poet.

The sun is high and harsh, little shadow forms beneath the craning sides of slumped buildings.

“Excuse me.”

We walk on.

His chest is bare, all sinew and slick and bronzed from the sun. A hoodie hangs off his shoulder, too big for his ravished frame.
There’s a kid nearby, cradling a beat up bike. He blocks half the alley and we move into single file. Are they together?

“That man’s trying to talk to you.” He points at the only other person there.

We are forced to accept his attention.
“I'm not begging or anything; I'm a travelling poet.”

“Sorry, we can’t stay.”

“Just a few lines.”

“We have to be somewhere.”

We try not to walk faster.

“Thanks for your time.” He calls out. A thin veil of malice sits in his voice.

“He’s been there for years.”

A very disturbing dream I had last night

A shopping mall: clean, open and sterile, built from steel and glass, reflecting the sun in a prism of mirrors; constructed out of light. Dressed in white, I slip through to the exit, where mouths scream and muscles contort. The people are filthy. Violence has erupted from sleeping paranoia and open desperation. A young woman falls across my path – her eyes are shuttered, her hair hangs over pale bloodless cheeks in a death veil. Her family clutch at one another as I cross over the path of her broken body.

A shadow passes.

Silence reigns.

The final calm.

And then the true light arrives, and it blinds them all before they feel the wave of heat. Ghosts are seared into concrete as the atmosphere becomes plasma. I bathe in the warmth of the end.

Fifty Odd Words No. 32

He whispers against the grain of hard laughter; his speech is a knot in the pine, lacquered with unsaid thoughts.

The raucous grows.

She untwists him into serpentine stories spaced with loaded silences.

Humid breath seeps into hearing; a hair rises to attention.

Her eyes flicker in a butterfly’s death throes.

He grins.

50 Odd Words No. 31

The roughness of him against you, and the pinch of two bodies clasped together. A hand pressed against a thigh and a sigh, escaping from lips edged with wanting.

Tastes of ocean; smells like cherries and aches from a swollen heart. As spring gushes through you, your cheeks become ripe apples, and flush to a red summer sunset.

Fifty Odd Words No. 30

I know you lied.

The engine shudders, lurches and chokes. It sounds dead. The heater loses breath; our tongues are dry and tingle with a metallic tang.

You said we were not coming here.

I can feel your body pressed against mine through swollen layers.

The edge of the ocean glitters in a brief show.

I’m sorry, you say.

False Promises (A List):

You can be whatever you want to be.

Somebody loves you.

The world is your oyster.

You will get there if you work hard.

You are unique.

You are special.

Be true to yourself, and the world will be true to you.

It does not matter what other people think.

Sticks and stones…

Rent Free Ad-Space

I am a consumer of what I believe to be epic proportions, I know this from the multitude of plastic bags littering, no – populating my living space. Their amorphous, colour intensified forms are a carpet of consumerism, a monument; a capitalist Elysium. Rent free ad-space to all I shop with, to whom I am willing to pay for the privilege.

They crisp beneath my feet like shingle on a shallow beach.

Fifty Odd Words No. 29

Needles stick at me behind closed eyes. The light is too much for my quiet moments of adoration, so I refuse to squint. Death of sight is clearer than a lack of resolution. I would rather remain here forever than touch the unknown.

Would you?

Fifty Odd Words No. 28

We hope to die, and then fall into each other, like there is no life left except between long-held exhalations, stolen by shameful regret.

Your words are lost in amongst deafening silence - I hear the bursting beat come back.

I burn to dust.

Fifty Odd Words No. 27

Shooting stars cross our hearts.

They are invisible at first: distant. And out of a deep night constructed from pinpricks in the void, the light approaches faster and harder, growing ever brighter: dazzling shrieking cascading blinding light. Virgin, unabashed. It fades to nothing.

Our emotions are amputated.