Crystalline blue sky and breeze
Like your eyes pierce naked trees
January leaves have turned to grey, paper shards between blades; Soon to rot down beneath feeding new growth of flower and leaf
A child passes, a scream of delight against this playground no longer in use; Now foxes, elves and fairies make their home here, in silent overgrowth of human play
Crystalline blue sky and breeze
Like your eyes pierce naked trees
And heavy moss covers the safety net where once they grazed knees and fell crying for help; A softer fall now nature has taken its course.
Once were shrubs and small saplings; now heavy bushes and reaching trees have no use for attendance.
Crows laugh at sight of a Tom cat, he prowls this patch every day; stalking the sand pit where castles once stood and the boy once played.
Crystalline blue sky and breeze
Like your eyes pierce naked trees
I always imagined a bee sting to be painful. But the pleasure of being penetrated by another living thing. That would die for your flesh.
I'm half awake
I imagine putting 12 mattresses on top of each other and setting them on fire. What is left are spring skeletons piled on top of each other. Like a huge spider web of metal coils. I fuse them together with a welder, so it makes a single form, a cage. I take wire cutters and like a surgeon begin to cut a hole in one end. Carefully removing pieces, burrowing into the form. I make a hole that is big enough for a human to enter. I keep burrowing until I reach its exact centre where I start to enlarge the hole outwards to create a perfect sphere in the cages centre. The mattresses serve their purpose again but in a different form. A cocoon.
Be gone Masculinity be gone
Under Rock and stone you go
Rotting with earth worms below
No resting place now
The boy is in endless flight
No more sticks and stones
No place here to call your home
Ceaseless, restless, maleness be gone, be gone
Vanquished
And that boy that fucked me and drank wine. I gave him I know why the caged bird sings. He threw The Waves by Virginia wolf over my fence with a note on it that read, 'wanted to say I'm sorry. You deserve better. Hope to see you in another life'. I never saw him again.
In this reverie
There is sunshine pouring through branches
And a boy waiting in the hide
Subdued with the smell of farmland
In this reverie
There is a slow passage of time
And a boy playing at being a man
Passive with sweaty palms
In this reverie
There is an air riffle sat neatly between thighs
And a boy with his gaze fixed, no not fixed
Calmed with the call of a calf to its mother
In this reverie
There is an apple ready for eating
And a boy poised to leap
Anxious with noises from the woods behind
In this reverie
There is a breeze that flickers the leaves in the spinney
And a boy resting his back against an oak
Placated with the sound of the farm at work
In this reverie
There is a rabbit that bounces across the foreground
And a boy whose heart flickers with delight
Soothed with little clouds that remove the heat
In this reverie
There is a handful of steel bullets nested in a pocket
And a boy who watches for signs of life
Apprehensive with the smell of a distant fire
In this reverie
There is a flock of pigeons that pass in the background
And a boy who wishes he had moved his spot
Tentative with twitching sparrows who confuse the gaze
In this reverie
There is a distant voice calling
And a boy who remembers himself
Eager to please with dirty finger nails
In this reverie
There is a quickening of time
And a boy whose heart begins to race
Traversed with a black bird swinging on its axis
In this reverie
There is weapon shunted between a child’s hands
And a boy whose gaze is fixed, yes fixed
Soothed with the sensation of air
In this reverie
There is an apple bitten
And a boy salivating
Nervous with the scent of rotting earth
In this reverie
There is a black bird perched upon the branch
And a boy frozen in time
Patient with heads hanging
In this reverie
There is a barrel of metal pointed
And a boy sharpened by his senses
Frightful with the event of death approaching
In this reverie
There is one shot taken
And a boy who has encroached upon another life
Mindful with eyes lowered
In this reverie
There is a silence that ripples through
And a boy winded
Hushed with morbid energy
I awake Under the concrete cliff of a harbour, there is no way out.
The water is cold, dark and putrid.
All around me a sea; endless till the horizon.
The ocean is calm, no waves nor any current; the calm is masked by knowledge that it could swallow me whole.
The boarders flanked in pine forests and chalked cliffs.
Only to swim around the coastal shore; in twisted familiarity.
Endless swimming in freezing waters; the darkness sometimes undone by a street lamp which floats mid water, lost at sea.
I know where I am going, I have been here before;
I reach an estuary, with its sides blanketed in reeds and farmland.
The swim is endless; there is no way out.
Occasionally Ii feel the bottom, with sinuous roots of water plants and rotting mud; my feet cannot rest here.
No doubt curious elves and mermen make their homes beneath. They reach up to grab my toes, wrapping their tentacles about me.
The journey goes on, a town is in the distance; hazy, phantoms, torch lit faces. There is no way out.