Smash the Glass and Let's Get to Dancing

When I'm tired and old, I'll do as I'm told,
but I'm young, wired and awfully inspired
to bandy about, the benefit of the doubt

Smash the glass half full onto the tiled floor
and let's get to dancing

Fail and Wait

Into the last wind I blew it
my last
a salute to the end of
the trial
Now we wait for it all
to settle
and you weigh
and I wait
and you weigh
while I pray
and I fail
I fail
I fail


Mix some honey
with this late spoonfull
and I will drink
down from your hand
Joshua's rememdy
is 2 parts death
to impart life

you prevail
I fail
You prevail

Barren Ones

"What is my barrenness It is the platform for His fruit-creating power. What is my desolation? It is the black setting for the sapphire of His everlasting love. I will go in poverty, I will go in helplessness, I will go in all my shame and backsliding, I will tell Him that I am still His child, and in confidence in His faithful heart, even I, the Barren One, will sing and cry aloud.

Sing believer for it will cheer thine own heart, and the hearts of other desolate ones."

- The Old School Mr Charles Spurgeon, rocking the kazbar since 1834

Stitching up the Mail

I've stitched up a new arrangement between mail and me. I'm going to open it upside down and look at the hidden parts first, the last parts now, to know your name before you write mine. When I touch the last, the latest salutation before your pen falls off the page, that's the bit I'll discover first, the closest we will ever be. Your last my first.

A terracotta dress

(Landsdowne back in the day)

I found a love at last. At a bus stop late and lit by the crimson tones of a whites good store behind me. I found a love while on the door step there, waiting for a bus or a man, a man or a bus. My love came by; he stopped and I think his world was turning. The Landsdowne closed and left his world spinning a bourbon whirl, and his sight fell into my lap.I laughed.
" Too pretty for a place like this"
Yes Yes
"I'm drunk, but friendly"
I know, I know.
He sat. He wasn't a bus but he was the next best thing with honest, drunk brown eyes.
And with minutes to spare he crammed my head with stories, stuffed to the full. A building, bare boned, his home half built, his girlfriend half gone, his drinking half too much of the hard stuff.

The bus turned the corner, I jumped up from habit, from hurry, from the harass, and left with half as much as I wanted to push into his mind.

A terracotta dress he said. It is not orange it is terracotta. Only honest men know that.

Love is Terry Towelling

Follow me home, inside, out, and underneath your nose I will leave a trail of teabags tied to notes. I will leave some cherries with songs inside of all the times I'd like to touch your hand and look at pictures of when your hair was short and your skin was clouded and your dreams were bigger than a two tonne truck and you couldn't fit them in your small head. Your pictures of your small head and big shoulders and pictures of the outfits your Mum made from terry towelling. I don't recall I've ever been in love, but if I had it would be with you- 5 years old and brave in your terry towelling.

wheelbarrows and rainbows

AEM

The scraping sound of wet cement in wheelbarrows is the sound of saturday mornings from my childhood. From wheelbarrows and lawnmowers come the world our Father's create. Fathers blow the concrete dry, making dry land for their families to go, making dry land for their children, one step, two step, skipping as they go

20s toes

There is a tree that looks like a 20s dress
fringed in swaying sensuality
and skinny knobbly knees
peek out beneath:
tree trunk legs.
But not in the insulting way
in the cute knobbly knees way,
with little white socks that have frilled tops
and black shoes that point like children to the sky

I came out red and the sky came out blue

I've packed my suitcase and moved over into a new blog town. easy, pretty, accessible.
To commemorate...more poetry.

I came out red and sky came out blue

The storm kicked in late
got me up and out of stagnant room
you move ahead of this and already I'm outshone
by the hazy moon.

Summer's first heated fight:
I came out red and the sky came out blue
and everything sits a little longer
tastes a little stronger
on these warm afternoons.

Listened through the fan
to people changing hands
preparing hearts, preparing plans
for summer
for the possibles and probables of summer rolling round
the bottom of our glasses
bright and formless
chores are pointless in the prospects
of tire tracks, trees in theme songs
and throngs of colours
shady plans
half-dreamt, half-believed
half remembered from an early, dust reprieve