If, If, If

If a matter is discussed and a plan settled,

does a question need to be posed

and an answer given?

 

If a shadow becomes more than just the absence of light,

growing solid, dependable, sentient,

shouldn’t it be given its own life?

 

If a half finds itself wondering if it’ll ever meet its other,

knowing some depend on it not doing so

and some hoping it will,

how can it live knowing one day

it might have to choose?

 

We puzzle scenarios to make sense of the world,

yet we neglect our own hearts

and are blind to ourselves.

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Reoccurring

I’m still falling.

I see the ground rushing towards me even as it floats away.

My feet

no longer know what it is to stand on solid boundaries;

they pass through

and I am birthed out into a loop

of waking and sleeping

and waking again to find that I’m still sleeping,

and can’t escape.

 

My breath comes short

but also long,

empty lungs somehow full to bursting.

How can this be real?

How can I be real?

How can I stop myself

from fading away?

Cosmic Crisps

I wonder what aliens

would think if they beamed up my brain

and analysed it – my dreams, my memories, my thought processes.

Me.

I wonder if they would sympathize with dream me

telling my boss to go home on his day off

instead of drifting around like a cloud of nervous energy,

or tell child me how to remember

those calculations that always escaped my mind.

I wonder if they would find other humans

as puzzling as I do.

Would they feel cramped with all the emotions I feel but can’t express?

Would they ponder details of life,

the same ones that sneak into my anxieties?

Would they feel comfortable

letting my brain reconnect to me

when I am disconnected to society?

Answers in my Spacer Raiders, please.

Little monster

We all have that monster eating us up inside. Yes, you know the one. I’ve named mine Calm. It seems to like it. Whenever someone asks when my book will be published, or ‘how’s that story going you’ve been working on for yonks?’, and I hear Calm start to stir – that’s when I say, ‘Calm, down! Don’t give them the satisfaction of making you bitter.’ Then it grumbles and goes back to sleep, and I can get back to work, unafraid that the little monster of self-doubt will sneak out.

Different planes

It’s interesting, don’t you think

how some people can pick up a book

and get so lost in the pages

that hours pass without them noticing

while others

get stuck on the first lines, trying to concentrate

but re-reading the words over and over again

without any meaning seeping in?

How minds can differ, wired so similarly

yet ultimately different.

Is your red really the same as mine?

And why, when you say Wednesday, do I think green?

If we describe the same person,

why do two different images spring up?

Do we see different things,

or is it our focus

that’s different?

Your world is my world…

at least, I think it is.

It’s all a game

Round you go,

upside down,

ducking under,

swaying aside.

 

Questions dodged

like an intense game of squash

except the rules have changed.

 

Step to,

dance across,

turn a bend,

walk away.

 

You have never changed.