The two of you rely on the two of us.
Such trust you place unknowingly.
No other life do you really know;
No yardstick but the notched door
That charts your slow-quick-slow growth.
But read between the notches:
The spaces between them represents nurture and nourishment,
Sustained by our love for you both.

Santa's house has many rooms:
One for every Elf.
They have sprays for farty fumes
And dusters for every shelf,
There are bins by every door,
And brand new hoovers for each and every floor!

Now all the Elves know their chores,
They've got them in their heads.
But tidying up is such a bore,
They'd rather go to bed!
Still, every room is clean and neat,
Because everybody knows Santa's always on the beat!

You see, Elves know they're super lucky...
They work each day for Ol' Saint Nick!
But if their rooms are ever mucky,
They'll be in for lots of stick.
For all that Santa asks of an Elf,
Is that their room is good for their health!

So every December night,
Ask yourself a simple question...
Would my room give Santa a fright?
If the answer's "yes" then hear the lesson...

An Elf's room is never messy,
Because they want a great big prezzy!

The Narcissist's roof caves-in as delusions collapse into reality.

When has this man-child ever had to face reality before?

I love the smell of inevitability in the morning.

Just as a frog cannot relate to a tadpole,
He could not recognise his younger self.
No retrospective map of life had he,
No string-tied bundles of diaries
Or heavy-hearted Journals
To reunite him with the naïf
Who floated along life's river
Unaware of being navigated by others,
Others who rowed but did not instruct
And abandoned ship on the stroke of his eighteenth
Leaving him overawed and falling overboard,
To eventually flounder upon the shores of independence
Until he was forced to stand on his own two feet of clay,
Like some evolving amphibian
Waddling into life,
Stomping and stumbling in the quagmire of society.
A faux pas here, a faux pas there,
Slow and painful lessons
That built resilience and self-reliance
Resulting in a proudly self-made man,
Now unaccustomed to failure
And whose memories of humiliating failure
Have sunk to the bottom of the river of his life.

The mystery stopped
When the apple dropped:
A simple, natural act
Of a fundamental law,
That keeps our feet on the ground,
Was written down
To little effect
On our state of being.
A pointless endeavour?
I think not,
A great leap of imagination
That escaped the pull of limitation
And opened the door to
Endless fascination.

Star jump
Slide to a bump
Mini Jeep driving
Forever striving
To win a race
Tie your shoelace
Stay on your feet
You won't be beat
Determination
No hesitation
Single-minded
Laser-guided
You won't conform
Not one for Unicorns
Find your voice
Beat the boys
You'll sprint through life
Overcome strife
Become resilient
Just be brilliant.
But, just for now,
No need to wow
I realise
I idealise
So go wild
Be a child
You know you oughta
My darling daughter ;-)

I had forgotten this silence existed.
One that lets me hear so much
Over distances my senses cannot gauge...
The bark of the dog doing its job
The clanging of trailers and gates...somewhere.
Birdsong, of course, is a constant
But I leave them to it, no need to disturb.

Not a socket in the house is on, by the way
Spring's sudden Sun generates comfort enough.
No Telly, no phone, no radio required,
Instinct tells me to hear the quiet
To receive not broadcast.
A bright orange book lies beside me:
It confessed all to me this morning.

I'll remember this silence always.

A day off to do nothing
Is got to be worth something.
A morning of sleeping in...
Dreaming, finally relaxing...
...HOLY CRAP IT'S 3PM!

I miss those days when I could turn heads,
And woke up each morning in other people's beds.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

I take a crash course in their existence,
Personal history, wishes and outcomes
Scribbled for a rudimentary assessment.

They are but scrappy souvenirs,
Notes that barely scratch the surface
Of lives that cannot be summarised.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

Irrelevant years of existence
Vast drowned numbers
Swimming with the fishes
Your blue-hypnotic drowns my eyes
Offering nothing

I dive into your cold embrace.

Scuffed brown shoes
With laces as long as your arms
Skip and scrape upon the cobbles
Skimming over tiny puddles
Reflecting a hundred suns
Dipping in and out of a thousand clouds.

That mask of beauty
Unchipped flawless marble
Sculpted by aged chemistry
Intimidates but seduces me
Chokes thoughts, obstructs words
A simple mind disconcerted by
That mask of beauty.

Ink dried quick
Art's potential energy
Music = MC²

Art can bide its time
Protected by the brave
Until primed

To explode off the page
Out of speakers into minds
As a weapon of mass attention

Pigeon in my loft
Shelter turned into a cage
Hence this sad high coo.

A cackle of Crows in her craw

I hung tantalisingly in the night sky
For a billion and more years,
Your coy companion,
Your one-faced little twin sister
Left barren by our mutual creation.
Glad was I then
- as an Aunt to your four billion children -
That you sent twelve to visit me in my dotage.
I do hope you visit in peace again soon.
Yours faithfully,
The Moon.

On the breath of twilight's yawn
Rose the star of dawn
Tireless in its cycle.

I have placed my childhood bibles (that aren't Bibles) on your bookshelf; hidden them in plain sight. A cheap subliminal trick I know, but one meant as an investment in time and knowledge: to peck away at your curiosity like the Woodpeckers I hope you'll read about in that Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds, which to you, right now, is just a jumbo colouring book too heavy for your restless hands.

My friend is a very good man,
Nothing to hide
No terrorist ties
But still,
He really looks like Carlos the Jackal.

The walk I wasn't on
Was, by all accounts, a good one,
I wish I'd been there
Because you were there,
But I bet you had nothing to say,
Probably distracted by nature's display,
Studying the forest's floor
Daring to be the bore
Looking up, occasionally
At the forest's canopy.

I'd like to pepper my poems
With referenes to Greek mythology
Or sprinkle a little Norse legend
Throughout my stanzas.
But, alas, it will never be:
For, you see,
I utterly failed my Literature GCSE.

This blue dot, home to **** Contrarius
Custodians and abusers of Earth
Who named everything seven thousand times
And created seven thousand differing deaths.

The Barista did warn me,
But my home brewed hubris
Really blew up in my face
When my boiling hot porridge
Eruptively boiled all over the place.

The further away I get from you
The more I can see into your past.
Time and space offer a grander view
Of how we made it last.

When we were joined at the hip
And our love was new,
All your faults were totally eclipsed
By my romantic idealised view of you.

Bwrw fama, arol dy' Sadwrn braf,
Penwythnos dwytha union r'un fath.

Like so much Beer Money
Jingling merrily in a pocket
The oafish group jostled,
Clanging and clinking
Calling and cursing
Up the unfamiliar boarded-up street
As, unbeknownst to them,
Their collective bird brains
Homed in on the nearest pub.

You weren't quite with it this morning
You bled Red-shifted light,
Soaked the clouds and stained the hills,
Startled a three year old
Not yet wise to your nature
"The birds haven't painted him yet,
He'll be Yellow again after Breakfast":
The reassurance of a father
Who does know your nature.
Of course, you got your act together
And, by eight o'clock,
You were basking in your own Yellow brilliance,
Like the celestial Emperor you are.

As she talked of her past
So too she talked of her future
For fate ricochets endlessly
Through the tunnel of her narrative:
A sorry tale told of a trapped soul
Yearning in vain for an escape
As elusive as it is seductive.

These lines should allude to
My feelings at this present time.
So, filters off,
Stick to a simple structure,
No fancy words
To polish turds.
Let's drop the contrived rhyme
Truth-telling isn't a crime,
So here goes...
Life gets dull post-40
And, like my body fat content,
Time is spiralling out of control.