Tired, was he

He went boldly up to the clocks and abacuses

marking out his life

and demanded to know why

they refused to see how burnt out he was.

 

They paused, studying him, and said,

‘We can see. But you didn’t state it before this.

Therefore, it was not our concern.’

 

And so they went back

to laying out his schedule

as if no interruption had occurred.

 

‘Hold up. Are you saying

you’ve seen me struggling for months

to cope with everything

you’ve arranged that I haven’t asked for

because I kept my mouth shut?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

In response to their answer, he pulled

them all down from the dais

and dissembled them

with his bare hands.

 

‘From now on, I mark out

my own life,’ he said,

and left them in a heap

of beads, cogs and springs.

Advertisement

Blood Magic

The world has changed,

the blood cries to me every night,

screaming through my veins

and the veins of my heirs.

It can feel the doors closing,

feel the separation, the desperation

the fear eating at people’s bones.

 

Old as I am, the locks have never been used.

A person could walk from here to the other side

and back again.

 

Yet orders have been given, magic has been stripped

and we have been exiled,

the youngest forced to spill their life force

to form the seal.

There will be no more of us now.

Patchwork

The days have been cut

into little square sheets

and knitted together with swathes

of cloud and typewriter ribbons.

A soft blanket with starched,

crisp edges to snuggle down into.

The only way those calloused

anxieties at the sudden lack of order

can be paled into beads of frost

that only thaw when thoroughly warmed.

Loud voices

Overhead, the tannoy begins

its daily screech

calling on the broken people

to give up their reach.

Pulling the clouds back

across the brightening sky

and drumming in orders

mimicking the buzzing of a fly.

“Bring out the ear plugs,

let’s deaden the sound!”

Someone shouts

circling the round.

At first, the response is dull,

little more than a whisper,

then the idea pops open

in their minds like a blister.

The movement surges,

a road is paved;

a future awaits where

they might all be saved.