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This dark chill is theft—daylight robbery
The sun roped up in the back of the van
Our good humours gone with it
To a human we’re phlegmatic, melancholy
And no draft is too crafty
No teeth or bones too still
They say it’s a vortex that’ll last the week
And eBay is selling out of finger-less leather gloves
But we’ll get up anyway
And at night, well, we probably won’t think of those in bed alone
But we should
God knows it was me once
Another human floats in its mother’s waters
A hydronaut exploring the womb
Trailing a thin, curling cord, with arms held close
In the coming months change will come
The little one becoming less little
Its incubator too
Dad won’t stay the same either
Growing responsibility
And yet more love for them both
When the timer rings
The fertilised egg come to fruition
Another human floats into its mother’s world
They’re doing what comes naturally
Building x and y blocks
Mandrake fed
If we’re lucky, we’ll make children as well
Choosing names we’ve scribbled for ages
And living for ever
Tokyo August 28
Tokyo August 29
The strings strum. Buzzing
Louder than the cicadas
In urban concert
Tokyo August 30
All the wide-leg pants
Billow in the wind of change
They’re not clothes for home
Kyoto August 31
A sake monsoon
And reversal of engines
More bullets than one
Kyoto September 1
War drums are drumming
The fierce tattoo of heaven
Tears rain like iron
Naoshima September 2
On the inland sea
Ships Japanese beef, top grade
Some rare works of art
Naoshima September 3
The three-shadowed rock
With a bronze lion inside
Keeps the summer heat
Tokyo September 4
Ten thousand black disks
Impenetrable rhythms
All the same language
Tokyo September 5
Six strings rent in two
Resurrection by dateline
Where summer sounds wait
Tokyo September 6
Season ending sleep
Night turning in the darkness
The sapling day grows
September 2014
If the leaves are turning then I’m going too
Featherlight we lay down
Carpeting the grass in the same roar and hue as flame
No headstones need planting because our bodies are all in bits
Spread thin and no longer ourselves but what has always been
The dust blown from a pin prick explosion
It’s easier than ever, returning
Gliding by gravity
You could do it by accident really
And people do just that – all the time
The public toilet
With piss dirtying the seat
Washed in autumn rain
In winter’s gutter
Lie needles, bottles and feet
A man unconscious
Koorie plays guitar
Laughter and a barking dog
Coins, a hat, now spring
Alone on the bench
A weathered hand plays poker
It folds with summer
Golgotha’s watchman lives on an earth-driven pole
Singing a frightful song of spilling straw
No nuisance do beaks make on his crop while he stares
Tinder-dry under his wide-brimmed hat
Wrapped in Winter’s hand-me-downs
In time, like the fields surrounding, he’ll bow to Autumn’s hand, humbled
Folding when the blue-black cornrows have been plucked
When the land lies fallow and the tools are taken for oiling
Uprooted and untied from his cross, he rests emptily on the bales that bore him
Waiting for fresh seedlings to reach up to the heavens, catching the crow eyes
Waiting to be made whole again
Waiting for the resurrection
