To an astronaut, it's full of planets
To a keyboard warrior, it's a weapon
To a stoner, it's a state of mind packed in a cone
In a race, it's a split second of opportunity

But to me, it's just where you're missing.

Time no longer falls quietly into order
the minutes and days have unravelled
digging their boots in the dust.

The hours and weeks stacked like rocks on your shoulders
as you drag time wearily along to nowhere.

Oh but to escape this ache.
Pain permeates the rocks and dust
soaking up through your soles
to lie like pebbles in a river
on your heart and mind.

But how do you run?
How to battle Time back into submission?
A solitary figure bruised and abandoned
alone in the wasteland .

Time weighs on you with the strength of ages
while the past snaps and slithers at your ankles.

Fight the claw and crushing restraints!
Emerge ****** and torn, yet victorious.
Tame the fickle measure of life
and send the past yowling back to its murky world.

Square your shoulders and lick your parched lips.
March on, you will conquer the wasteland yet.

"Hey Critter,"
is how Jake greets me.
About that  dude-
he said-
he's a child.
You deserve a world better.

I was telling my
Mate Jake
that you're coming over
and he said
"good."


You don't even know him yet
I said.
Yes but from what I've heard
he said,
he's "good."

So today I was drinking whiskey and juice
and playing pool.
Then we went to a friends house and
watched the boxing.

I don't think
watching people hit each other
is exciting so I
smoked a lot
of cigarettes.

Hey Critter
Jake said,
and I know he's got my back.

I'm building myself a fortress
a tangle of bricks and mortar,
deep in the forest where you can't find me.

There are spikes on every window ledge
and a deep dark moat full of monsters,
and I'm inside the darkest room,
visor down and armour shining.

But all this doesn't matter, you wont attack with force.
The armour is useless and the walls will crumble down around me
without the help of a siege.

Because you don't need to find me,
you've already kidnapped my mind,
I can put up no fight
and so
memories well up and spill over.

All I can feel are wounds made by no swords,
empty places that ache to the bone,
armed for a fight I've already lost.

You disarm me so completely,
all I can do is surrender.

The first time I kissed you (again),
we were sitting in your car,
under shadows and street-light orange,
and the impression I was going inside.

But then I found your NERF gun,
which you said was for robbers and slow drivers,
but proved more entertaining for girls
who like to sit in your passenger seat.

So we broke into a scuffle
in pools of orange light
abandoning  seat-belts and any pretence that I was leaving
to wage an epic war
inside a parked car
over ownership of the polystyrene darts.

The end came when a missile was lost to your backseat,
and we both reached for the NERF gun,
and that kiss I'd been waiting for since I'd first put on my seat-belt
materialised between the space above your handbrake
and a little plastic gun.

On soft paws she
comes dancing like a
slip of
silken air
to pad about the room
feigning innocence.

Then,
quick as the wisp she blew in on,
drops her guileless  disguise
in haste
to do battle with the socks
and commandeer
the newspaper fleet scattered
on the floor.

But,
in a flash
the crusade
she won
is forgotten.
because she's found a hoard
of spoils and treasure.

Among the
warm golden spills the battle claimed
on the windowsill,
she lounges,
and rumbles her tiny
lion voice,
surveying her conquered Kingdom.