My story of us
Of a clock blonde ticking
Counting the sheep until apocalypse
A simple verse would not suffice
Nor would a complexity borne of years.

A deluge of elocution,
Remembrance drowned.
The fickle combination of
Llamas and lambs grazing
In my backyard alongside other
Metaphors.

The llamas wear glasses sometimes

Anguished intellectuals
Locked up in bedrooms
Chained to porches.
Their advice is good
Their words wise and thoughtful
Themselves, ****** up.

Ink stained tomes littering desks.
Nail bitten fingers clinging to pens.
Red veined eyes squinting at parchment
Words given life. But to follow ones own advice?

Rare is the joyous bespectacled llama
Bestowing wisdom onto the sheep
Watching them frolicking on the lawn
Trying to find rhythm in gangly legs
Urgently, awkwardly alone.

Tacos, pulled pork and quesadillas
Garish and gaudy being the clarion call
for the food truck battalion
An armoury of captivating aromas
Savoury propaganda mastered.
The war is won.

This I write to you
From the deepest sea
Where the gentle swell
rolls the boat softly

For it is here I am left
To contemplate my life
And the choices I’ve made
That extol my strife

I made them then
What’s done is done
They’re mine to own
Each and every one.

But I am the product of
These decisions of mine
And I’d do them again
Time after time

And so, this I write to you
From the deepest sea
Where the gentle swell
rolls the boat softly

And all I can say is I’m sorry.
To me.

A lock, enthralled by a fist.
A mouth, enamoured by a neck.  
A picture, on this Friday wall.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.