Flap happy

My hands are manic, I think I might fly.

This elation in my chest can’t help but come out

like how it’s near impossible to hold in the face you pull

after tasting something sour.

If I flap any faster, I’ll end up in the sky.

 

Commute

They line up at the cliff edge, eyes on the storm clouds ahead,

nervously opening the umbrellas they’ve just been handed by the young assistant

about to direct them.

He asks a few questions, answers of which are stolen away by the wind

as it crawls through their mouths and hair.

Then he takes out a combined watch, compass and barometer, counts down

and gives a short pip of his silver whistle.

As one, the first group steps off the cliff

and catches the draft down to the city below,

floating serenely as their suitcases dangle by their knees,

carrying everything they need for arrival.

Another pip sounds behind them, and

briefly they wonder

how many the assistant has to guide today.

 

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Shore song

Dance with the water,

draw its salt up to your heart:

calm, well-balanced mind.

Safe-cracking

The elation is bubbling, it’s brewing inside,

wanting to escape my body, making my fingers want to twitch

and hands flap, like a great torrential tide.

I know I can release it,

no-one’s said I can’t.

Yet the stares and whispers from ghosts

keep the iron-grip I have on myself

as powerful as an attack with a lance.

But if I do it when no-one’s looking,

release the hold bit by bit,

perhaps I can let myself flick out this ball of energy

and have it leave me content and happy

without shaming myself to quit.

Modern Art

Your mouth parts slightly when you sleep on your back,

eyelids as soft as if they’re painted on.

You spend so much time animated –

jumping from moment to moment –

that at first it was strange to see you rest.

Then I learnt that this is the only peace you get.

Trickster Timing

It’s a strange thing, time.

Hours can feel like days

when you have something to look forward to,

someone to go home to,

to hold, to cherish.

 

When you’re with them, days

pass like minutes,

heartbeats of a hummingbird,

rolling the week along

so that once more you have to part.

 

Time, that careful trickster,

changes again,

making every second drag,

as if taking extra delight in the stab wounds

separation

causes you.

Space Hopper

If I had seven league boots,

I’d travel up to the stars.

 

If I had three point five league boots,

I’d travel to the highest mountains.

 

If I had one league boots,

I’d travel to every lush space I could find.

 

I am barefoot.

 

I can travel only until I get tired.

But there’s nothing to stop me believing

 

I have seven league boots.

Inner eye

The world is a pearl in an eye full off possibilities.

It reflects the river that sounds so fully in your mind;

roaring and strong and always surging on

catching drifting thoughts and forming them

into something solid and proud.

 

We are alive

I can hear you in the music that dances around me.

Feel your arms around my waist

and inhale your intoxicating aroma

as we fly, not fall, into the abyss

that greets us with a full display of colour

and vibrancy.

We could travel through every wormhole, portal

and slit in the fabric of reality

and never lose sight of ourselves

because we build from one another,

never decaying.

versicolor

I can bleed all the colours.

You can open me up and read my text,

flick through to any page you like.

Find the golden ration in the spiral

of my ears, watch as they angle

to listen to the world breathe.

I can melt the ice with my sweat,

or freeze it again with my touch.

Watch rubies grow in the chambers of my heart

and see the sand heated into glass

replacing my valves.