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.
The deep-water sound of someone pissing from a height at 4.30 in the morning
before the first blackbird has it in him
to wake up and start singing
and no car hums the tune of rubber on tarmac
and the night has its own sound
a no-sound
a “fuck me, well hello again, it’s you” sound
and I join in the silence,
eyes wide open and mouth closed shut
and I breathe in and I breathe out
and it doesn’t do much good and I turn over
on my side and wonder if I should read by reading light
or just get up and kiss the night
goodbye
so I say hi to my pen and paper and I want to write a story,
any story,
about the world and what goes on in it, within it
and all I end up writing, again, is my own.
Damp sheet,
summer heat
I turn my pillow
over and over
and fuck off mosquito, you bitch
(it’s the females that make you itch)
and now the early morning crows
are crowing, or cawing
while the neighbourhood is still snoring;
except me
and I’m turning
like an undecided Brexit MP
as I can’t for the life of me
cool down
so I get up
and stroll on the balcony
in my shorts
it’s just me and the crows anyway
in this summer heat.
The longest day,
the shortest night
The summer solstice.
The sun rising between two tall stones.
The Pagan rites of five thousand years,
or more.
Time keeping time
Too hot to sleep
A midsummer night’s dream,
or nightmare.
Summer sticky heat.
The sweat from a thousand pores,
or more.
The longest day,
the shortest night.
Aaaarrrkkk!!!
Crow the black
cawing in the morning
from his lofty perch;
this Summer Solstice
is his alone.
Harbinger of doom
Picker of corpses
Guide to lost souls
Friend to Pagans
Raven’s little brother
descended from Thought and Memory;
who sit upon the shoulders
of the one-eyed god.
They see all
and tell him everything.
The summer sun sighs through the strains of a morning
So humid
I open a window;
to sounds that fill my space
The unwinding of the blinds on another day
A car coughs
and a motorcycle
screams down the motorway
Birds wittering and nattering in an air
thick with heat
a fly whines, a bee hums
as a cat pads through grass
No breeze murmurs in this sultry morning,
just scratching
as my pen rolls across the page
like a bead of sweat between the shoulder blades
The heat
The sultry heat
Humidity
Show humility
When my temper frays
And my patience craves
The rain
The wind
And the cooling
Of my soul
The summer lust
The heat-filled dusk
The night
The tortured night
My Words, My World 