Parisian Flower

Parisian Flower

The Arc de Triomphe
Is white with snow.
The labyrinthine streets stretch into the city
Carrying the footprints
Of lovers finding their way –
Like butterflies walking the long soft petals of a spider lily
Finding nectar

The steep steps rise
To the Sacre-Coeur and the knights at its walls.
The roads and their cobbled stones joined
Where hearts have been smitten
The roads and their cobbled stones cracked
Where hearts have been broken
The artists sweep their brushes –
Bleeding colours, shadows and blushing cheeks –
Across the canvas
The wind weeps
The singers sing
And the mimes mime silent tragedies –
Like the withering of a rose

(Somewhere in this city)
From the most saccharine nectar
And Music's most selfless abandon to melody
And Nature's most unrestrained display of beauty
Came you.

Sometimes, I Notice You're There All The Time

Sometimes, I Notice You're There All The Time


I think about how the gin
Has left me at the mercy of the night
Bus.

The kissing couples, crimping cuddles
Pout-faced selfies, trout-faced uglies
Garish giggles blunted
To wispy whispers.
Thank you, Gin.

I think about how the haze
Might make me forget all the things I should
Remember.

Someone giving me the eye
A beauty, up for
Killing free time.

Someone giving me the eye
A loony, up for
Skinning me live.

I drown in the fog
Lost in Lethe
Looking for questions like
"Who am I? Where am I? What happened to my shoes?"

I think about not thinking about her
Out of reach but everywhere –
Like the ubiquitous skies
Against which my world is set.

Something Missing

Something Missing


The sky is blue
But not blue enough
A faded
Washed out
Almost azure
Almost white
Half-colour.
The overeager sun burned too brightly
And bleached its soft hues
Harshly.

Overdriven London

(While Being Driven Through) Overdriven London

Neon burns white concrete blue
Without consuming
Glassy rising peaks racing towards
Sheets of violet sky
and sinking crescents hanging in the spaces
Between skyscrapers
Angles and curves
Singing to the eyes
Barren branches with pointed pincers
Sparse but standing
Between rushing street lights and magniloquent maisonettes
Starless but twinkling
Too modern for nature
Historical but futuristic
London sings to the eyes
And trickles into golf courses
Detached five bedroom houses and
Empty
50 centimetre pedestrian crossings.
Reading calling

A Dissection of Guilt

Sea Mosses and A Dissection of Guilt

[All he sees in himself is
Evil
And good can coexist in the same person

He will lose his mind if he gives in to these
Obsessions
Which spring from remorse cannot be bad

His actions are the cause of other people's
Harm
That is self-inflicted is righteous]


They found a corpse
Near the hit and run-on
Lines of ink drawn to
Trace the results of the
Sin

Autopsy – Cause of death?
They cut him open and found
A heart that was basically
Good but full of pus and
Decay.

The felon and the victim
Were the same person – one
Living inside the other –
Saint forced to harbour a
Sinner

Though non-biodegradable,
His conscience had worms
From parts of him that had
Died living in it – alive but
Dead.

He was a man of the forces
Who fought across waters
To keep foreign vices at bay
So they gave him a burial at
Sea

How unfair that oceans so
clear and blue and clean
Should be burdened by the
Tiny weight of many little
Mosses.