My Words, My World
First drafts – A few pages in the large wilderness of the world of writing
Moka Shock
Coffee taste in the morning
bitter and black
the caffeine zing
Awake yet?
The mocking moka sits
bubbling and tempting
Do you want some more?
Like Oliver Twist
Try the sugar buzz this time
Oh, but I really shouldn’t
black but not bitter
caffeine in the bloodstream
caffeine in my body’s machine
leaving me wired
and no longer tired.
Magic orange button
This is no waiting room this is waiting on the ward this is the hospital bed this is the walking wounded this is hospital food and a week of post-op antibiotics this is the gown that never closes this is the intravenous drip that drips drops into the veins this is that magic orange button for the need to pee in a plastic bottle or replenish the drugs when they wear off.
Air
Little sleep,
no air;
anywhere.
Sat breathing, sweating
standing is worse
respiration and perspiration
this humidity makes me fidgety.
But wait!
The billow of the drape
as the air becomes movement
and the curtain sways and dances
then, like a tired ballerina
it curtsies, and drops once more.
Rain, finally
The hiss of the constant rain,
at last.
The patter of raindrops
against the glass.
Windows, tiny windows of clear water
shatter as they hit the ground.
The air becomes water
and the water, air.
I stand, I breathe
and the skies open.
Water washes away the withered spring;
rivers on the road
rivulets on the window
and the trees raise their branches
and give their thanks to the rain.
Two till six
Watching the twos, threes and fours
of the morning clock.
The sixty second minutes, as they
count the hours off.
Sleep eludes me,
sleep deludes me.
Five is here,
in its cold, dark hour,
Five now passing into six
and still I sit,
unsleeping.
My insomnia wakes me,
my insomnia hates me.
Essence
The view outside my window,
stark,
frozen in time.
The essence of the tree
suspended inside.
The view outside my window,
dark,
the lights shimmer,
captured in time.
The essence of the city
flickers outside.
The view outside my window,
mark,
the rising sun,
welcome in time.
The essence of my soul
warms me inside.
Rise
I bleed, I breathe,
I sleep.
Sometimes.
I wake, I walk,
I see
the signs
I go, I stop,
I wait.
For what?
I feel, I fall,
I kneel
beneath the sky
I rise, I try
to stand
my shoulders back
my strength in hand.
Breathe and look and listen
At 4 am when the world’s at rest and the only ones awake are those that should be and those that don’t want to be. I step out onto the balcony, breathe in the deep pine scent which flows down from the mountain. In the clear air the black sheet of night is bejewelled by a thousand diamonds and the planets are visible without the need for technology (except for my glasses). I sit and breathe and look and then I listen to a distant owl, in my usual waking hour before the hooligan cries of the crows begin.
Lungs
I woke up the next morning,
mouthful of strong cigarettes and bad whisky.
My lungs felt like lead weights.
I coughed;
it sounded like Tom Waits, singing in the gutter,
so I knew there was hope.
Time
The sun rises
I sit
It rolls over me
I sit
It goes down and disappears
I sit
in the sultry, inert air
that moves not leaf nor hair
like the breath of the dead
or the sigh of angels.
The moon follows sun
I sit
The planets align
I sit
The stars wheel overhead
I sit
In the night’s darkest hour
when time slows down
to the separation of continents
or to the beat of broken wings.
Twisted long dark hours
Twisted long dark hours
suffocating
skin drip and turn, turn
over and back
the weight of air
shallow,
lung heavy
sleep evades me
as does the slightest night breeze
sheets adhere to me
as does the vaguest night dream;
now forgotten
the first birds call
in the sticky summer night heat
in the twisted long dark hours
suffocating.
99-word fiction: Wanted
He looked out from the trees. Nothing moved in the thick summer heat. The field sloping down to the shallow valley floor shimmered and the waist-high corn lost all its ends and edges and blended into a carpet of green.
He heard dogs in the distance, the heat probably getting on their nerves like everyone else but he was happy it was only the dogs he could hear; for now.
A bead of sweat stung his eye and he blinked several times, not wanting to take his hand off the branch it held.
The other was on his gun.
Motorcycle
The road keeps rolling under two spinning wheels
and your eyes are peeled;
for anything and everything
and the heat of the engine burns your knees
as the cool air kisses your skin
and with the visor down you can see the bugs hit your face
while the wind plucks at your jacket with its airy fingers
as you change up and change down
and your ankle stiffens like a rusty bolt
and you sweat; you sweat
and the inside of your crash helmet smells like a wet dog
but it’s all OK because that’s a motorcycle;
that’s my motorcycle.
Pavement
I walk the pavement,
Why would I walk anywhere else,
when I can avoid the chewing gum,
the discarded face masks,
the cracks and the dogshit?
I breathe in the petrol,
the diesel,
the LPG,
and the hum of electric cars.
Two-stroke scooters battle big-engined cars
as they vie for the same space,
for their little piece of road.
Everyone’s going somewhere,
everyone’s got a destination,
home to their evening:
the nagging wife,
the bottle of wine,
the TV sound,
the steak dinner.
A thousand thoughts in a thousand cars,
a thousand distracted minds
all wanting to get where they’re going…
or maybe not.
A thousand different things to do,
but no one’s doing what I’m doing:
walking,
while avoiding the chewing gum,
the discarded face masks,
the cracks and the dogshit.
Cat
Cat walks freely,
independent,
Cat sees who he wants to see
and hides from those he doesn’t.
Cat takes a stroll through the garden;
not his, obviously.
Cat goes where he likes,
where and when and why.
Cat sees things in the dark
he sees things we can’t
Cat sees spirits of the departed
and he doesn’t let it worry him.
Cat could hunt;
but decides not to.
It’s in his nature
but not his character.
Cat snarls at the birds
twittering in the trees
why should he climb up,
when he’s found a place in the sun instead?
Cat decides he’s hungry
and moves from his sunny spot,
in through the catflap
and into the kitchen.
Cat looks at the empty bowl
and thinks he should have learned to hunt.
Two hours
A two hour lie-in or two hours wasted?
Head afuzz with insufficient sleep
At least that’s how it felt when I woke up
flicking on the little alarm clock light
with a dry mouth, warm pillow, cold nose
Who turned the heating off anyway?
A two hour lie-in on a dark winter’s morning
Not exactly an incentive to get up
A reading light under the covers,
A well-thumbed copy of Factotum in hand
Bukowski going from drink to drink, job to job, hole to hole
And me thinking it’s time to get up now anyway.
A Wednesday stream of consciousness
An on-off night and a mosquito in my ear and I fumble in the dark and then it disappeared but now the night has gone for good for me as I lay there and think of what I have to do, what I probably should do and what I’d like to do and all the while a soundtrack is playing in my head and it’s Manfred Mann’s version of The Mighty Quinn which is not a bad song at 5.30 in the morning, although I’m yawning but now I really want to hear it but that means getting up and using technology and 5.30’s far too early for technology, after all, I’d only check the news and see big, fat Mike Pompeo bully another sick and twisted little country with sanctions, sanctions and, ah! stick your sanctions up your ass, fatty, so it’s no technology for me, like a smoker avoiding his first cigarette to let his lungs breathe, you see, and now I’d love a coffee now I’m up with the birds but I guess putting on the kettle is still technology but I could really use that coffee while my pencil scrawls my morning scribble across an unwritten page.
And I, alone
4am and the world is unmoving,
until I step outside.
The air is warm and still and
the terracotta tiles are cool beneath my feet
Quietude absolute.
A half-moon headlight casts my shadow
A scattering of stars against a black velvet backdrop
Mars; loud, red and angry
and the owls compete for who can hoot the loudest
and I, alone, breathe the morning
and I, alone, feel the morning
and I, alone, become the morning
and I, alone, am the morning.
Black and white
Black mountain against a grey marble sky
No technicolor sunrise this morning
I beat you to it
There are more than fifty shades of grey
in this sunrise.
This morning is Cagney and Sheridan in
Angels with Dirty Faces
This morning is Bogart and Bacall in
The Big Sleep
This morning is a noir dream
This morning is black and white.
The simple Economic Truth about Reducing Carbon Emissions
A down-to-earth, well thought-out and knowledgeably written piece on the predicament the world finds itself in and considerations which should be digested.
Hopefully it is now widely accepted that we must reduce carbon emissions in order to have any chance of stopping the earth continuing to warm up. If we don’t, it is likely that the damage could be irreversible and the future world we live in is a far harsher place than it is now.
How are we going to be doing this in the UK? Heating makes up around a third of emissions; driving cars accounts for another fifth. Heating our homes using natural sources, air or ground source heat pumps; hydrogen boilers; building homes to a better air tightness so they need less energy to heat them; these will all help reduce how much fossil fuels we use in the future.
Having user friendly electric cars to replace the current petrol and diesel versions will also help. However, driving range and re-charging point availability will have to be better…
View original post 1,819 more words
Closure
Christmas passed,
the year thins to an end
and I too seek closure;
of my eyes in the darkness
(well, temporarily at least).
My thoughts flash like festive lights in no order
and my mind considers things like political parties
and grey life under the Stasi,
of free-flowing intellectualism
and cold, uncaring capitalism.
I think of flights and holidays
and rhythmic train journeys
hurrying to their destinations
where destinies await the destined.
I think about the sun
and where the winter has gone
(It will be back to bite us on the ass,
no doubt).
I think about you and me
wind-blown from the sea.
Years end
but the waves do not.
Tools of the trade
The keyboard lies silent, like a long-closed factory, its worker-keys now unemployed, passing into disuse and irrelevance.
The pen lies on its side, like a dead soldier, a used-to-be who has taken an early pension, now laying in the sun.
The notebook lies closed, in a crypt-like embrace, its secrets hidden inside except; here there are no secrets, just untouched pages.
The once-writer lies on his side, a book in his hand, eyes skipping over the words someone else has written; and wonders.
The sea’s breath
Yesterday I felt the sea breathing as I watched the wind-strewn waves; some breaths shallow, others ocean deep. I fell into their rhythm and breathed in the salt spray and breathed out my soul in return: sea salt spray for my soul or what part of it I leave here. Today I heard the sea choking it’s breath no longer a rhythm but a slow death rattle. I walked in to it, embraced it but plastic caressed my fingers, tightened and gripped my hand and embraced me, as I wanted to embrace the sea. I pulled, and the plastic relented the more I pulled, the more it came but still the sea couldn’t breathe. Tomorrow the wind will still blow and the salt will still tang the air and the waves still sigh upon the shore and where once the seagulls cried the only sound will be the empty laughter of the few that profited from the many of those who took from the Earth and spat back its destruction. Yesterday I felt the sea breathing and wondered how long it would last.
Silence
Staring at four bare walls
unavoidable, inescapable
No sound, just silence
Not even the mechanical sound
of time passing
as a welcome distraction
The silence isn’t deafening
but the thoughts are.
If they had colour
it would be grey
If they had sound
it would be a low, lost hum.
The drip, drip, drip of the leaking tap
The drip, drip, drip of the leaking tap,
tightened to the full yet still…
drip, drip, drip,
like some mad aquatic clock
or a water deity’s idea of a joke
and where does all this water go?
Does it race along the tubes and pipes
only to be unceremoniously
spat out
into some shitty sewage treatment works?
Or does it instead splash happily along
those tubes and pipes
and find itself jettisoned
into a little stream,
just a trickle at first
which is then joined by others,
left to the same fate
and together they form a river
which gets faster,
noisy, rushing water tumbling over stones worn smooth
and dancing over rocks and waterfalls
and down, always down until finally,
in the distance,
there’s the sunlight’s reflection on water
and the river’s pace gathers
and drives on
then, finally, pours into the sea
where the drip, drip, drip of the leaking tap
becomes waves upon the shore.
Winter night
A fingernail moon falls down the evening sky
and now the wind has dropped,
from a bluster to a breath
as the frigid night descends.
The trees, immobile in their submission,
silhouette against silhouette,
branches handing like the arms of the guilty
as the frost’s frozen fingers
freeze all they touch;
and even the church bells are subdued.
But lo!
A thousand firesides
lead like beacons in the night,
protesters’ torches in rebellion.
Cold is the winter night
but is vanquished by the hearth of home
Whereabouts
-
-
My Words, My World 