TANGLES

 Thank god or whatever, or whomsoever

Presides over missing objects,

That I never said what I thought

I was going to say.

Now I know that I was wrong,

All along

The thing that I had thought was gone

Hadn’t gone at all.

It had concealed itself behind a door.

But in my confused brain

I thought it had been deliberately taken.

I believed that to be

The only possible explanation.

What a sad shambles,

Mentally I thrashed around as if

Caught in kraken’s tentacles,

Or as if I had fallen into a prickly patch

Of brambles.

Until I composed a cold polite speech

To address the whereabouts of

The thing that I had thought was gone.

But I never uttered

This mistaken accusation,

Because the gone thing reappeared

From where it had aways been.

So, I didn’t have to seem

To be more of a drooling fool than I usually do.

Smoke

Tobacco and marijuana

Smoke hangs, swirls

and curls in a sun beam

those who have inhaled it,

then blown it out of lungs again,

look at it with young wonder,

thinking that it means something.

Years and miles further on

Sunlight shines through

Smoke from a chimney

Making dapped patterns

On the tarmac carpark below.

One person watches this

Another is gone.

Smoke only means this for a moment.

Cerberus hellhound

 In July 2023

Cerberus hellhound

Breathed on Europe,

With one of his three heads,

Burning green trees to ash,

Turning fertile soil to dust.

But in smug Brexit Britain smug Brexit Brits were smug

Sitting staring out to sea

From urine perfumed promenade shelters

Trying to discern

A horizon between grey and grey 

And thinking about fish and chips,

As squalls blew in.

But don’t let Cerberus

Get a whiff of that,

Or he will lift all three of his heads.

And he will

One day.