Baby Steps

Eventually, when you emerge into the world
find your two feet firmly tentative, shuffling
muffledly, Unleash your desire into the world recklessly
"walk", you think. (did you just command me?)


Your body, inexorably, acquiesced to motion,
your shoulders still stiff, ready to slump.
Pinpricks - like needles, accompanying sweat beads,
accumulate, accessorizing your neck hair.

Two hundred and six goodish bones, so many
specialised muscle tissues (find out which, yourself)
Limbs, skin, face hanging in the periphery,
won't let on the secret workings of their machinery.


Yeah you can learn lessons of what lies within
collect stories of how we work, when you observe a
cadaver, getting the royal dug-out treatment.
Innards laid bare, a post-person's ultimate unwitting surrender.

Roundabout Truths

If we can – freely –

admit to ourselves that the

Underprivileged automatically

lead more virtuous lives

and the righteous follow in file:

then we might suspend this

acting out we do in difficult ways;

misdirected (almost) always

on unsuspecting souls & elbows

[it’s a privilege to be unlovable]

Then we might even find ways

to answer the oldest question ever posed

How to pass the time? This time, with fewer scars;

who knows? We might even make ourselves

useful.

There’s virtue in being useful; mostly
it’s honest and has constructive results -

- usually. When I sit with my grandma a while

I feel I have been of some use.

And I pat my own deserving back for it.

Tote

Sometime this season

You'll stop the spiralling

Out of control. The

bristling'll cease.

You'll bless your breath

As it leaves your body,

and you heave 'self to

and fro quietly.

The colours are the

 kind that seep through

The folds they fall,

becoming you.

Drive about town;

a deserted look

Eyebrows that have

been abandoned.

Persisting sulk

Burl won't go away

Acquainting with

a gaggle of freaks.

Last and final call

Grab some empathy

Stuff it down your bra

Proceed to boarding.

A Not Unraveling

Let me get to the heart

Of the matter at once;

My deepest darkest secret fear

Is that I will let myself down

And crush those that I love,

Through actions that betray

a pathetic lack of courage.

Not uncommon, I know.

Not even unfounded, it’s true.

But the hole in my stomach -

-the dryness of my mouth -

the derailment of thought;

Confer a unique experience

Each time the penny drops

I realized this some time ago,

And that more out of curiosity

About my own internal process

A wonder at my surrender

At my acceptance of paralysis

Will it always be so easy, so familiar

these patterns of failure

I search for my inner Ivanhoe

propelled by a greater fear, of course;

Of time unaccounted; sunken costs –

Standing still – and yet getting lost.

Will I survive not being constantly gratified?

If I split into two, I might see this through

But I can inhabit the future only when it’s now.