Prod my tummy and measure my pulse, pat me on the head and call me well. As much a healer as anyone I know: under you I release, with all doubt quelled. Clean me; stitch me; set me right; Your needlepricks sweet stings — Bed rest by you is deep and strong, With the healing [...]
I didn’t see it until a really sunny afternoon: too much food and too much wine, I waddled through the gallery for relief. No cosy pressure, no soothing sounds, no comfort apart from space and light; just release and ease and peace: and room to be. There was no one there but me. My mind [...]
A day of fragments, interrupted tasks, a to-do list broken into bites and left scattered; a wobbling cyclone around the desk, the house, I find half-finished jobs. I forget; I look for curry and soft bread, the aromas burn: the day leaves me scungy and putrid with the scents of tedious business, poor and irksome. [...]
While I work in a world of grey, of pantyhose and short, cheap carpet, I dream of planting strawberry crowns so green and red it hurts. I dream of scarlet syrup, waiting fruit, sunset-crimson and deeply sweet; in jars, in rows, on shelves, at home. But sunlight is finite, office days long, the commute finds [...]
Overhead, battle fierce and conflict biting A swift silent contest of perpetual fighting As the dust and the air carry minions of war: Each breeze and feather bears a seed or a spore. Silent and apparently still, the trees Fight maliciously for the rights of their seeds, A war millenia-wide, an unending fight, Writ too [...]
I wish for pumpkins I had planted but did not, alas, alack; count three months and wonder what I was doing that far back; to deprive the now me of sweet and ready autumn globes? Would it have been so much to ask to push some seeds into the earth? Would it have killed the [...]
Today is a public holiday Chez Crayon.
If I, despite brains and logic, despite laughter, smugness, joy and sense, despite all these, descend into a sticky mess stuck, splayed and thrashing, do not sneer. If I, despite swagger and love still feel shame and warted over, be kind. Do not assume I am self-loathsome, do not see me as broken; do not [...]
Let me not curse the guts that churn; let me not curse my bones; let me not grumble at fetidity and bile. Let me love the microbial sparks of life; Let me love the creaks and aches; Let me love it as neither weird nor vile. Let me love the surges of health, Let me [...]
I steal the voices of those I read, the ones I hear and sing to; I appropriate their successful meter: and their rhythm cling to. I adopt their articulation quirks, as though I’ll find the trick to make my dull familiar rhymes rich in thrills, in tingles thick. Completely unintended plunder, compulsive mimicry: I hope [...]
