And they asked, are we losing our membership? To sensible decisions that weigh on each of us like lead. And solder panes of life together, into a stained glass vision. Soft enough to bend, hard enough in our blood to warp our heads.
Cool Of The Shade
Branches wave at me through the depths of a cloud-domed darkened dawn. Wear my worn out trainers for a casual day again, Or harsh splitting boots if there’ll be ice on the floor. I can’t slip into the road again and spill my confidence. I don’t want to go, I just want to live in your warm quiet arms again. The valley where shattered sun fragments fold and puddle into a day. Breeze into my brain, Like a street curb in summer, As sweat dotted handlebars slip, From a loose untroubled grip, Feel the cool of the shade and I welcome it.
Every Crack In A Crumbling Voice
Snowed today but it’s all gone now. Slow danced in a box room between stilted conversation, With people I’ve always loved but who have never existed. The G string is me, and the thinner B string is a thin veil of them. We exchange wonderfully tense in each other’s breath space. Sentiments drag in the air and fall through it, Casting shadows in the shifting shapes of meanings, Into the pockets where the lung’s soft projections are obscured. Feel every crack in a crumbling voice, Searching for the words at such fragile close range. Cannot help. Cannot know. It would be beautiful to know. But it is also beautiful not to. To swim in the lush tension, And float on the bottomless tolerance of the unsaid, For another lifetime of calm quiet suspense. We are two rings of a Venn diagram, Heavy with swallowed feelings we aren’t sure will fit into our overlap. Pulled closer with each response. So aware, and so lost as every second after incendiary, anchorless second scrapes past.
Shrinking Mirror
Motors you can’t turn until you try To flex your iris, to curve the candle light The world gets no cleaner bathed in night Such tiny muscles slip the grip of nerve endings in low eyes Fumbling with a gloved hand Sieving in the hot sand For memories carved in rocks That you lost, that you dropped From waves left as they sank must have been important Dig after them And every grain under your desperate knees Is another eroded speck of distant memory Enacting their passive revenge Smoothing the masses that don’t remember them Revelations hatched Set into stone Grasping for meaning From the nest they have flown But a rock doesn’t fly A rock only falls Quietly snatched from a world It can’t understand at all Your lost thoughts tumble Until they shine Until they reflect that dumbfounded look Back into your lost eyes And you shrink In a shrinking mirror
Lumbar
When did he grow so old? When did he admit there are places he’ll never go? Burnt holes in the paper maps Cratered space saving weight Every gram helps his craning back Woke up today As playdough caked in shapes Best he can remember From the kinder kind of mirrors They don’t make anymore The totems shift with each night The vertebrate spin in the wind as they clang and chime Singing the day’s refrain Whispering all kinds of shit In the ancient language Of lumbar pain My spine’s a fishing pole My line is caught On some sunken piece of brickwork Not that swimming silver sword That I was born for Maybe I wasn’t born for anything at all And as the current drifts Softly links my arm and pulls me with it Gently like a friend in turmoil Panicking in the street Guiding me from phantoms that only I can see But they have me.
Brutal Ease
They're announcing the redundancies The shift before all schemes fall through The day I took off for my birthday After seasons spent alone Compound to dust so simply blown With brutal ease cards unreturned carried away If hate is hyperbole Else unredeemable I don't use it casually For meaning warped and sold Do something you love I got the same advice as you But couldn't bring myself to instil the belief That I could still love anything I'd have to pluck and gut and stew Can't bear to look at after all it did for me
Swallow Hard
I’m always wrong And so are you Maybe that’s alright When what we thought was right falls through And it won’t make sense To us anymore Pieces fit worse and worse The harder that we pound on that jigsaw Of an ugly scene And physics distort Until gravity follows forced shapes It’s direction spins unsure Tearing our belief from us with it Scaring us with what we’ve done, as we smash into new logic Swallow hard It’s ok It feels better to apologise Than to avoid the pain Part of life is to be right Part of life is to be wrong Part of life’s to be responsible For both of them I’m always wrong And so are you Maybe that’s alright As long as we try to Accept sure mistakes Realise we suck Sometimes but so does every human that we know And every human that we love Imperfection’s built Into stubborn minds So there’s nothing to be proud of Until we let go of our pride Feeling the bruising blame ain’t fun but it’s Accepting weakness to stay decent and balance the wrongs of natural incompetence
Still Green Waves
Every muscle aches, ones I didn’t know I had Beams across each palm where the bare handle sunk in I flipped out at the machine, barged it past points it seized Pushed and threw my might against it’s primitive, stubborn controls The grass outside is a mess You can’t say it’s not cut But you can’t say it’s better The miniature meadow with warm hued flowers bobbing on still green waves Tall weeds, made grand amongst their peers Shed their stigma, they aren’t ashamed here Grasshoppers in camouflage and lost ladybirds An eyeless striped caterpillar climbs to the peak of a bowing blade Curls up to the sky, extending to stretch, basking in the sunlight I cut it all down Not cleanly, not gracefully Arduous and ugly, thrashing and hacking I only hope this gave them all time to flee To feel the rumble of the end and take one last look at their home To feel lucky to have absorbed some measly beauty in such a short life It will grow back soon enough for me, a creaking pain to tend to But for them it will never exist again
Changing Gear
The train flew past And I wasn’t in my seat This time I drove right past the station From a loud room, with the breeze Gust along control Through years passed and received Scared to change gears for my dad But now who’ll do it if not me? Here to be dropped Into our small ponds, now we swim We grew up into fins then legs To climb out and wade in again Between flashes The city looks unchanged to me And it’s dumb but I feel sad When there’s not time to walk lonely Through neighbourhoods that keep Their old meanings quietly And I’ll try to distill an old feeling That’s only the same in the memories Grown to accept the hand-me-downs You’re so surprised I’m in new shoes And I love having dry feet But not as much as I love you We’ll take it all And it’ll be all that we feared And we’ll do it so willingly Momentarily feels weird And then just is Tumble back onto our feet The portraits still the same But their backdrops slowly creep Conveyer belt context The shading shifts to throw new light Onto dormant pains inside us And certainty into night Watch the scenery fly faster Until you’re hurtling alone The meaning slips loose and past you And barrels lost into the unknown Grasp into white-hot new Reach into terrifying change That as it holds your life in it’s jaws The devouring dimension makes seem tame
The Last Day Of June
Today I fell into a pit. Today I ate too much spicy food. Today I didn’t sing very well. Today I listened to all my artefacts. Today I woke up early and left the house late. Today I let the hours slip through my fingers. Today I picked the wrong side of the road to walk home on. Today I ate my whole lunch bag too early. Today my guitar didn’t sound in tune. Today my pedal said it was. Today I looked at maps. Today I copied graphs. Today I spoke some wise words from dark times. Today I noticed the painting hung above the stairs. Today I cancelled abandoned meetings. Today I saw too much. Today I couldn’t look away. Today my head spun like an umpire’s. Today my sandwich had yellow pepper. Today I smacked pillows and blankets. Today I learnt about our videos. Today I consumed our videos. Today I stapled a chunky report. Today I took my time writing a long address on a large envelope. Today my handwriting was tall and nearly neat. Today I lined up the red stamps. Today I curled the envelope to force it past the narrow postbox mouth. Today nothing happened in the small square outside the window. Today I batted a ping pong ball to the beat of my headphones. Today I heard far away voices through my headphones. Today I started my sentence without unmuting my mic first. Today I flicked out short emails. Today the backs of my legs went numb for a while. Today the screen of my hand-me-down phone stayed on for too long. Today I let too much of the wide world into my own atmosphere. Today rush hour felt more rushed than it has. Today a delivery driver materialised from nowhere down a quiet side street. Today gnarled men sped their bikes off the parkway and into the crowded crossing. Today they scared the silent lady next to me and laughed at her as they passed. Today the other guy plowed ahead juggling tennis balls. Today three people waiting at a crossing feels crowded. Today my teeth didn’t thank the water cooler. Today I ate numerous home-baked cookies. Today I saw a magpie. Today our neighbour’s cat watched me as I reached my front door. Today I woke up two minutes before my alarm. Today I showered but didn’t wash my hair. Today my book sat in my backpack unread. Today my hands smell of red spring onions. Today I enjoyed taking off my shoes and socks. Today I opened the window and listened to the birds call across the valley. Today I didn’t spend any money. Today is the last day of June.
Quit Vision 