the seaside

sometimes warm waves
aren't the perfect antidote
and all that will do
any good is
the raw
crashing of water-
icy, terrifying
and without control;
under which to hide.

Cartography

Sometimes light just gets lost.
It is not so much an issue
of identity as it is
a matter
of
geography.
I partake in
directional dyslexia
with pride
and my trophy
is topped with arrows that
face in opposite points,
on a compass;
amid
the muck
and the sand.

Particles get stuck down gutters
and become too woozy
to make their way
back home.

We immerse ourselves
in neon
and try to see sense.

But i know that the sea still exists.
I can smell it;
even when it rains.

'labour'

and there shall someday be a day
when you will stop singing that song.
when the brown packages that
do not arrive
take all of that
beautiful and iridescent
faith
right out of your throat
and your lungs
and your little books
and your soul.
sparkles blind
and you are oh so
often lulled into
the second act
without so much
as a drop
of poison
to whet your
tongue.
we do not need
to be able to see;
the hairs in your eyes
may even be
the rope that
you need to
pull yourself
up
from down
under.
all that we need
is to be able to hear
the real words
of our own
libretti;
with hands that are redder
than blood.

Learning to climb trees

There are times when
learning to climb trees
is easier
than others.
He told me
that maybe
he would
never be able
to show me
how he does it;
teach me the tricks of his wooden trade.
I watched him
-from just
close enough
to know that
some day
we would
share a home together,
next door
to a pigeon's nest;
with not a rope-ladder
to be seen for miles.

midsummer

I find the photograph inside of a box
that is smaller
by far
than the dimensions of the
photograph.
I know
(deep down on the inside of inside of me)
that this
has its own
separate
and colourfully illustrated
meaning,
(outside of the segmented particles.)
But I shall not allow this
to dance
(as if around the maypole)
inside of my mind.
I bury the paper
at the bottom of the tree
on the right hand side
of a shared garden-
at night-time;
as a squawking seagull
mourns her eggs.
I tie the faded
image
up in ribbons that
have become
frayed;
just in time for
the revelry.

a love song

He has become her now.
Or maybe he is just tickling the air with his limbs.
She is holding onto a crepe paper sandcastle
instead of passing him the bucket and spade.
The passers by watch; bemused and sullen.
They twirl inside out and they pose as gulls that want to feast on the
sandwiches that have been cut into
little triangles-
so beautifully,
as the wind plays the sexiest of solos;
on the banjo.

Indian mathematics

Sometimes she will just leave the box locked. She will whisper an intangible secret in a heartbeat; a dive into the depths of the southern most square centimetre of the deep blue sea. The sea will not perceive her by its senses. She will become a rebus for seclusion.She will seek to interpret her isolation but she will merely philosophise on the nearness of silence. She will become the embodiment of that hidden truth; her years will read; 0 and then 1 but she will never become the sum of the previous two.

Brother and sister

Running through the Grassmarket as the rain lashed down, softly on the last day of the first week of June- your winter Sunday ways (only known to me in the past tense; as a child-with dolls taught to live in your colour-coded world) have began to pirouette all around of me, again. But there is still,(somehow) a wee yellow haired boy, stood- like a big tall oak, on ancient cobbles; beside me.
With his hand in mine, rubbing away my tears with fingers covered in spaghetti hoops and fairy-liquid;
blowing bubbles.