Expressive Explorations

darkness swallows the nighttime  flick   light flits from the ignored expanse.        midnight mirror misleads the eye amongst the gloom.       all reflections confound at night.     as i'm watching what light there is    seems to hover between the walls. clocks rush through hours in one tick.          i turn to look towards outside.     daytime window reflects sometimes - part-time mirror that in a mind       click can flip to being a hole to the outside.    i am trapped here in-between. as          what's before me stares blankly back, water creeps down my spine again.              as sun arcs,  changing light confounds. whether via mirror, window or air, and however you look, all light arrives distorted - it's the rogue echoes half-light dance, curving through the tur...

To create and maintain 32 seconds of wonder can take a lifetime. Like some strange law of diminishing returns, where meaning spreads out, like ripples, from the creator, who finds such pride, such purpose, in their process, that they drop a stone into water that splashes through the medium of people. We can create our meaning, through where we spend our time, if you can feel it gleaming.  ------ I'm very grateful to have this poem published in Issue 2 of Flights . 

We are walking in a wood. To our left I see paper in the process of dissolving in a pool of water. You are wearing a long, beautiful skirt, that I haven't seen you in before, which occasionally swishes against the clumps of newly fallen leaves. Above, the wind replies. Nearby, to our right, but out of sight, water burbles by, though the ground we walk on is gradientless. Birds chatter music all around, enjoyably consuming lingering summer insects. There are no further away sounds. We have walked like this for years, extensive explorers. Stronger. Interlinked. A twig snaps. You turn to me with a well-known, warm, calm smile. Let's keep going . 

As I round the corner a man and his tiny daughter are standing beneath a tree, eyes on the ground. "They're called helicopter seeds," still uncertain on her feet, she reaches down and grabs one and throws it into the air. She giggles and he smiles as the small seed twirls to the ground, to rest and then I'm past them.     There was a sycamore tree      in my neighbour's garden      and the helicopter seeds  would fall       onto the path  of the house I grew up in.      I'd grab handfuls       and float them      into the village stream      and watch them wash away. As the delight fades behind me, I am alone again and grab a copter of my own. I carry it down to the river railing of the big new city and look out across the churning water, until watchers move on. I let the seed fall and follow it for the time its beautiful shape allows, before it cut...

I just saw the cord of my blind swinging and was surprised by the strange shapes of its shadow; the differing of an object and its shadow felt like original thinking, until I remembered the cave of an old chap called Plato. Other languages probably have a word for when you felt so mindful but were beaten to the idea by more than 2000 years, when out of the obscured, spins a thought, so graceful, until new light means the shadow disappears.

My partner                    at the time found you in a hedge on the way back from work dirty tired and alone and brought you home So small                    at the time that we thought you were a kitten rather than malnourished and mistreated as we later learnt from the softly spoken vet who you didn't like at all It took a long time to loosen your fear of people as long as it took for the beautiful grey and black splotches of your fur to return to beautiful white and black and to soften to our careful gentle touches that were permitted more and more by our new family member I didn't mention                     at the time that I suggested the name Bess for your superficial  resemblance to a cow but you responded to it and the name stuck before my motive was uncovered A miracle         ...

My friend was talking about a painting by Magritte, of a pipe that is not a pipe. Straight into my head, with calm fidelity, I saw an image of a pipe, floating in space - the sort of pipe water flows through, with a right-angled bend in its shiny metal. I looked up the painting, to be sure, and I'd got the wrong sort of pipe all together. It was not a pipe, but a pipe . Hmm... Maybe I was thinking of the cover of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells? Out comes the phone again. Closer! The background is as I imagined and the material is similar, but still no pipe. Unsurprisingly, this floating monolith is a triangular tubular bell. So where did I see the pipe? If I did see the pipe. Which is of course not a pipe (of any sort) anyway...

head snaps up      step      CRASH! at my feet air rushes past my legs and silence long  open  silence my eyes move up slowly to the shocked mouth where the warning still hangs it closes toward a smile

In British winter, the sun never quite rises, but hints light, through cloud.

As leaves umberise and heaters click on - even as I know the movement is comfort, never regretted - I can find myself wanting to curl up, bear-like. But this afternoon, I'm choosing you. As cold surrounds and I find myself inside, alone and frustrated; as a lone pigeon perches on a freezing bridge; you warm me,  calm me,  recharge me. This morning, I'm choosing you. As the soil opens to evening's return, you focus my excitement, reinforce my energy and stretch  and lighten, as if unfurling after a long dormancy, to new growth. Tonight, I'm choosing you. As light wakens and lizards bask on sand, I lie, sensing us connected. You lift me amongst the long-tailed swallows and soft cirrus clouds, to simply be. I'm choosing you, I'm choosing you, I'm choosing you.

Sea, you stay so far away, but I see you in the stream's and river's flow to you. Moon pulls on ocean and swells move toward, away - endure our heat and castaways from afar - carried to you by man-made torrents and bare abuse of our onsets. Will  it change before it's all change? Crisis has come, but still we float on doomed currents. 

Clouds, formed from distant oceans, sometimes attempt the dropping  of a blanket  of snow on the city, but the heat of bustling bodies never seem to allow it to last. There are so many people here, that my mind sometimes feels crushed beneath the weight of their imagined lives. It sprawls. I have been traversing it for hours, legs and wheels whirring around and below me, and yet on it goes, out of sight and out of mind, almost. It's remarkable that somewhere big enough to hold the days and dreams of millions, could be so oppressive, so constricting in its expansion. All these lives go on, and spiral and intersect and connect and sustain, into a possible future, where no four-by-fours, no cars at all, wind through these streets, congesting our lungs. Where classes are just for the exploration of expression, engaging with interest, for interaction. Where the national park of the city, flows with diversity, braiding humanity with earth. But for now, it sprawls, and I search for t...

As a carefree boy, I'd run, jump and climb, lightly. That's when I was safe, or so I thought. Looking back, freedom was gifted to me. 

"That's not what really happened. Everyone says it was going well until he went too high. But I was there, ploughing by the wet pebbles.  "I'd looked up from my work tempting the wrath of the boss, and I saw someone on the pier being forced into shoddy wings. "They never got above the water. Their feet skimmed it briefly, but there was never time to soar and the weight of those wings in the water, dragged them down. "The spin machine started quickly and the story couldn't be Icarus had no choice and no chance . That doesn't work like Don't be as greedy as Icarus ."

My brilliant, ingenious sister had the idea to make paper aeroplanes to throw at you, when you argued, and to write "DON'T FIGHT" along the wings. As if an attack across the streams between you would confuse and dissipate whatever had come between. Don't fight. It makes love look so fragile. Like every failure will send love flying, spreading shrapnel. Like anger will always descend and steal affection away, whenever a mistake is made. Maybe the next time, when the shouting was about to start, and the air became thin and taught, the aeroplanes flew un-thrown and circled round and round you, stopping you splitting apart, until time blew through.

I am a chameleon. I contain multitudes and wear my skins, not when I choose, but when the background demands. Can a slippery lack of fixed, known identity be an identity in itself? I am one who moulds around the strong. As ugly as what is behind, as beautiful as what imprints, I search for where I can eat my fruit flies and flicker nature. 

  While together, connected and strong,      fibres interlinked, hold us together. But then the construction becomes clear. While                                              miles apart                                              ever- ything                                          passes bet-                                            ween us and                                              expires. The  ...

Feeling freshly threshed, I left. Into yawning jaws I left seeming lifetimes past. Arrange integral parts once more. Hoping grouping sits once more, a last hopeful prop.  Some day freedom calls for me, this is not the time. For me: endure some more still.

-------------- a cosmic bow -------------- fires the arrow of time ------------------------ unerringly ----------- from order to disorder ------------------------ which still revolts ------------------- my organised brawling mind ------------------------------ historically ------------ an enduring pattern-noter ---------------------------- bringing a taste ----------------- of control to the discord -------------------------- always hasty -------------- I'm compelled to grasp order ------------------------------- ------------------------------- the sway is sweet ------------------- to escape chances mercy -------------------------- just for a beat --------------- may keep me rising early -------------------------->

There is a bee outside my window, caught in a spider's web. I'll watch it decompose and be consumed, for however long it takes.