Betwixt the cloud and rain
Lies more than empty sky
Life’s clumsy saga built
As bumping, joining drops
Condense around discreet
Impure or dusty nuclei

Between the day and night
Soft rose light smattering
Romantic goodnight kiss
To mix pink more with white
Unseen pollutants dance
In shorter wavelength scattering

From birth to adulthood
When kind compassion blooms
The road of dusty harms
Full humanness in-bud
With suffering and pain
An alchemy of timeworn wounds

Malicious hearts will hurt the empath
As summer hurts the winter shore
Eroding buffers until burnout
Kind retreat, the only cure
--

End-of-summer beach
Seabirds’ shaky screech
Grey gulls too full to cry
Bin chooks too fat to fly
Sorry shoreline
Systems offline
Foot pounded
Rebounded
Flattened…
Shrub ripped
Wing clipped
Sand-******
Grass plucked
Party bruised
Cocktail-cruised
Cans on conches
Fish unconscious
Foam and flotsam
Wave-blind coxon
Soda can crab shacks
Neon pink algae tracks
Whelk shell graveyard
Absent lifeguard
**** platoons
Naked dunes
Cheapened
Weakened
Exposed…
Tidal hangover
Coastal leftover
Erosion potluck
Sitting sea-duck
Strong incoming storm surge
Winter solstice land purge
Quick and shifty beach thieves
Cyclone tempest mouth-breathes
Recalcitrant brackish aggressor
Intransigent briny transgressor
Suspensions of sediments modified
Walling and breakwaters compromised
Over, back, and whitewash makers
Bubble, rubble, boil and breakers
Weathered, not weathering
Tempered, not tempering
More block than gavel
More grave than gravel
All prisoner no guard
Grain short of a shard
Receding sand-line drift
Intensive shoreface-lift
Patient unresponsive
Highly hypertensive
Code cerulean blue…
Plant encouragement
Shoreline nourishment
Sand transplant
Grass implant
Healing hiatus
to homeostasis
Swell subsiding
King Tide presiding
Prince Neap succeeds
Warm court accedes
Managed realignment
Sanctuary assignment
Steadfast protections
Timid reconnections
Gentle, careful, soft,
and slow…
  A new beach visitor
  dips their toe

She awkward steps back kitchen-side
This pan-lapsed food-fond alchemist
To where her latent joys reside
In flavour-labours sanctified
    Through boils, in bakes, on roasting
Her last cooked dinner, holiday
Before her dear one took their leave
Too painful kitchen-time replay
So, pots and mixers stored away
    Lost joy of home-heart toasting

Now humming with slight body quake
Full fear of fast descent in tears
Yet realising the heady ache
Was no impending weep-long lake
    But simple mess frustration
In truth the galley, clean enough
But who put all her tools away?
No soldier knife line, shining tough
No pin for shortcrust, brush for puff
    No decorating station

Crisp tuts for every tool misplaced
With tiny sighing shoulder arch
Utensils that could not be traced
Like grieving that could not be faced
    Rough substitute located
While losing whisk, sieve, spoon, and knife
With larger pieces from her past
In working through small kitchen strife
She found her hiding zest for life
    In crusty pastry braided
    Joy-cooking reinstated

Mental round-about
Self-esteem see-saw
Innocent web search
‘Change core beliefs from childhood’
Google tells me it’s child’s play

---

Welcome to the rest of your life
The best of your life, your best of your life
You are the author of your story
Around the metaphorical turn,
along the symbolic path, up the figurative stairs,
you open your catachrestic mute eyes and deaf heart
You are smarter, stronger, sightlier
Socially appropriate, admissible, acceptable
You have worth, hold worth, make worth

Choose something new to believe in
Start today, heart today
Chart your way, heart your way
Treat your limiting beliefs like thoughts
Write your belief-thoughts down
Be honest - no cheating
You can’t fool your brain, so retool your brain
Today’s lies make tomorrow’s whys
Use your neuroplastic, elastic, synaptic
retroactive, augmentative, cross-cognitive,  
meta-thinking for better thinking

Renew reckoned resilience
Never say ‘no’ to anything again
Bent grass that always bounces back
Elephants, drought, and weeds
Fugacious clouds in your sky
Master of no-limit living

You can cope with anything, everything,
all things, unlimited
(uncurbed, unchecked, unreasonable)
You can do it, all up to you
(Your responsibility, burden, fault)
Coping, thriving, ruling
(Your “no-one-should-have-to-live-like-this” life)

---

Romanticised view
Of self-thought-work road
Not slides and swing sets
But stepping slowly daily
A journey in compassion

Clear, kindly limits
Held for shared welfare
Outside-trap living
Not shiny, crafty life-drain
Growing into wiser eyes

Why do we carry this language of blame
Describing our keys to survival?
Subsist and survive are not really the same
The latter complexion, more skin in the game
Not best-life but rest-life deprival

How can we cope in inflexible ways
When bad comes with real consequences?
Surely attaining more subsequent days
Shows that our coping is worthy of praise
Extended, effective defences

When can we grant ourselves residency
With normal societal backing?
Without the heretical hesitancy
But carrying coping more elegantly
Set free from self-tackling attacking

       Can we retell our histories
       Including the victories
       Earned by our damaged main actor?
       Are social consistencies
       Issuing injuries
       Skipping the benefit-factor?

Behaviours may surface inexorably
No use in my current rendition
But very successful in rescuing me
And thus, I will carry them generously
Admit that I needed them desperately
       But not in my present condition
Release them with grateful permission

Better to be taciturn
Than babble through a tacky turn
And fail to hear enough to learn
In common conversation

Others may proclaim you shy
Or timid, mousy, terrified
Resist the urge to justify
Your ramble regulation

It doesn’t make you weak or mute
To take a minute to compute
A thought before you contribute
May optimise your speaking

Pause won’t hurt your cause unless
Your words are just a game of chess
To press, suppress, or to impress
Correcting or critiquing

Do you desire a partnership?
A sharing, caring, airing?

Or more of a dictator-grip?
A snaring, scaring, blaring?

Maybe you are silence-scared
Uncomfortable with empty air
And feel it is your job to bare
The sound continuation

Worry not my helpful friend
Your heavy duty at an end
More useful with an ear to lend
       Look kind toward the taciturn
       You may yet find a lot to learn
With still consideration

Travel free my inner scapegoat
You’re liberated, off this hook
No more shame-horned
Guilt-stomached dread,
       scarce enough to wrong-bare
Not startle-sneezed or tremble-shook

I excise redundant remnants
Bad wattle glands where crime hangs large
Not Billie-blame,
Nanny-regret
       or just a wrongless kid
No fair-trial felon, biased charge

Imagine dropping heavy torts
The solid clunk as fault hits floor
Past carried light
Kind compassion
       wide enough to weight-bare
Rich mixed plant pasture evermore
An end to serveless inner war

We ask wild feats of writers
Unselfish word-bleeders
For work that is numinous
Words for joy, laughs, and weeping
Us hungry feel-feeders
Eat verses voluminous

We absorb works in moments
They divest force in phrase
Emotion frames numerous
Words for light, love, and darkness
Channels hours and days
Air-weightless and luminous

We call comedy writers
Carefully humorous
Use joking for distance
Words for howls, roars, and giggles
Sweet-flavours existence
From bitters that ruin us

We challenge dear writers
To capture the cumulous
Joyful, enlightening
Words for life, growth, and knowledge
Anxious, heart-tightening
Funny or humourless
Instructions in humanness

Mimosa pudica retreat
Humid glasshouse, rainy day
Pane-separated from the world
Exhaling foggy vagueness
Colours run wet
World through window walls,
a distorted Monet reproduction
Morphing, mixing, mushy
Each canvas exists for a sliding second
Glass and breath
Collaborating through condensation
Our fuzzy-haze masterwork

Panoramic gossamer lens
Magically softens
spiky, scratchy, sharp, crispness
into a smudgy simulacrum
A kind deceit
Frowns, scowls, growls,
and bared-toothy rage,
all smeared
Gently redacted
Calm, dreamy, pillowscape broadcast
Impressionist buffer
In muted pastels

Reality in artful disguise
Remoulded for ease of consumption
Sugary spoonful of subterfuge
Sifting, sorting, selective
Incomplete and fragmentary
Blur-clouded brain-break
Intermittent extra distance
Breath-focused,
soupy-warm,
momentary masterpiece
Just for me
Until my leaves unfurl