in my head

a rolled up blanket
for a headrest buttress
i report
every door i open
i say “this is where the magic happens”
in my head
and laugh
in my head

sometimes the poem is just what i was thinking that day. and where i was thinking it.

the yaktrax

a pointless punishment
for my eczemic fingers
janurian resolvers avoid
pavements rinkish
speak to the sun, the sky,
the sea and the trees
mass palomas fly,
sneeze around disease
rife and virulent,
bring us to our knees
re-shorn past the
pine scent xmas ceme-tery(eee)

my fingers were sore from the cold. the streets were asheet with ice. i bought myself some yaktrax, remembering them from a personal injury legal report. but the ice was gone before i got to wear them. meanwhile, people were throwing out their christmas trees, fed up of love and goodwill and all that sort of stuff.

reverse engineering

every poem, novel, recipe
and joke
exists quiet in the ether
the poet doesn’t create
she discovers;
with a notebook she uncovers.
a subterranean homesick miner,
reverse engineering the blueprints
of a universal designer

in a universe without life, does maths exist? does moral philosophy? do poems only exist after the are written? or are they just waiting to be found?

reus brexitus

brexitus rex, a fencepost;
no entry for french blokes
yes hello we are here
it is act two of don quixote
or quixote like quick’s oat
(though i prefer key oh tick,
like chaotic)
in which we ask,
will the windmills we recall
from the first act charge back?
in which we find,
that windmills
don’t charge on poets

happy new year.

i started publishing the poem a year after i started writing it. and as i published, i continued writing, but within a new context. in cervantes’ don quixote, book two was written after book two was published, and don quixote’s resulting fame was part of the story — the other characters he encountered has already read the first book. the first novel and the first example of metafiction. so if you are the sort of reader who throws the book at the wall when the author is introduced as a character, i’m sorry to inform you that this has been part of the challenge novels present to readers since the start.