Album.

dog-eared pages of images
 rusty green
     playground slide
 and see-saw
     between the last time i wrote
 poetry about the past and
     now.
 now whittles away
     between my fingers,
 like a speck of dirt crumbled
     and flicked to the side
 blown by bustling breezes.

 i leaf through pages
 with a guitar strummer
     crystal clear, and
 clearly never used.
     how many dreams
 i spin will end up the same
     a dry, dusty museum?

 but spring-cleaning
 without the spring
 is just self-sabotage.

 i keep my precious things
 inside an album. 

The half-halcyon hill

I heard that you were
 grasping at straws,
 struggling to convince yourself
 the dry grass was made of gold.

 Gargantuan shadows shivered
 beside you in the dim moonlight,
 demanding that I pity you.

 You didn’t want to be pitied.
 I saw you playing
 the toy bells that dangled
 from either side of your head,
 which made the ringing sound
 that hurt your ears so.

 I walked over to the other side
 of the fleeting half-halcyon hill,
 where the grass was an ocean,
 the air quelled and quiet.

Calm

I guess I shouldn't have expected
 the world to hold a cup of rainwater
 and not drink.

 Human beings are not born with restraint.
 Only birds hop on the telephone wire
 without pushing one another.

 Familiar eyes watch through holes in the clouds,
 the puddles are gazing back at the stars,
 so why are we compelled to reach out, and touch?

 Dipping in and out of disturbances,
 I should not have expected
 to cup a liquid moon in my palms,
 and have it stay.

Fetch

Stick spinning mid-air,
 thrown against fistfuls of stars
 away from the ground.

Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge – Write a haiku about being lost, without using the word ‘lost’.

Banana Troubles

They try to assume
 the very best of people,
 poor suffering banana fruit
 bruised by cruel transit.

 Maybe some bananas
 go bouncing off the sides of
 their spiked crates,
 and that’s a tragedy.

 But who writes about
 the person who assumes wrong
 and carefully wraps bananas
 riddled with glowing red eyes?
 these tendrils so hairy
 against human skin,
 creeping and crawling
 until deep within the itch
 never fades, should they ever
 have to trust
 a banana again?

 Go on and cuff them
 over the head with
 condemnation, for
 poking and prodding
 their next shipment,
 a mask pulled over their face.
 It will do nothing. The seed
 of indigo fear is planted,
 and the leaves brandished
 waxy and waterproof.

Beansprout

I'm not the person
 others would call a poet.
 I am a beansprout
 in a field of flowers.
 I want you to feed from me, not look
 as I flounder in the wind.
 I would rather that you
 grew from these seeds. 

Concrete Cave-in

1.  Molten wax, which I catch, falling to the floor
 2. Grey thud, a door shuts in someone else’s head
 3. Someone else’s stubbornness
 4. Night-time noise nearing the nail-dented bed
 5. Things I can’t articulate between lips, tongue and teeth.
      a.    I articulate them in the hours of my days,
      in these small insignificant handfuls of words,
      the desire for a wide-open sky is purified
      and crammed into the capsule of a canto,
      a stanza, a sestet before the volta, but also
       after it.
6. Calm and collected, this classification of candles
7. Chart, categorising chambers of the heart
8. A concrete cave-in, reported in the dark. 

One Day, Someday

Maybe one day I’ll feel
 the right feelings,
 pastel hearts pasted
 and not a tear wasted
 on mourning myself.

 The real artists are elsewhere,
 aren't they?
 And all I write is just an ode
 to someone else’s suffering,
 to someone else’s life. 
 I paste prints I bought online
 all over this poser skin of mine.

 I love my skin,
 but it’s just not authentic enough.
 It’s too tough and bendy,
 and aren’t sinews made of plastic?
 Aren’t the callouses on 
 my joyfully beating heart 
 nylon synthetics?

 Maybe there’ll be room
 for improvement once the
 consideration of the many and the few
 is nothing but golden sunshine drops,
 and meanwhile, I can while
 away candlewax
 on these words
 dripping with indulgence.

Moving, Living, Leaving

I
 
Your picture is still
 framed in my mind, a gloss stain
 on these matt grey walls;
 outside, the stone-throwing storm 
 leaves a dust that dies away.

 II

 I must not allow
 delicate daisies to bow,
 and sag their white hairs,
 below which – vibrant grasses
 play tug-o’-war with the wind.

 III
 
To live is to scratch 
 a deepening, reddening 
 itch – and soon a wound,
 while seeping through window cracks,
 sunset colours it orange.

At Some Point

At some point
 the world must
 run out of 
 new words to say
 in celebration
 or disapproval of
 the same two things.

 These are only
 the days, the nights
 that cycle past,
 glowing faces
 curled in mirth
 that people might
 ever think that
 time passes that
 things change. 

 It seems they
 must run short
 of alphabets
 of logograms
 of syllables
 of signs.
 How else can
 we say we
 are mortal?