Students, all women in our freshest years, we settled on landings with mugs of tea, never thought to lock our doors, and, late into the night as Sweet Baby James floated up the stairwell, we gossip…
. a distant sound .
Nightjars! Unforgetable!
i think i heard a night jar
up the valley here.
it was a quiet night except
for that.
we have the window open now.
sbm.
ATimetoHeal
ATimetoHeal
Choosing a place to sit
Isn’t that easy
I need to sit with my back
To a wall never a door
My preference is always
To sit where I can scan
The comings and goings
The entrances and leavings
Keep watch on that guy
Shouting when a whisper
Or words spoken quietly
Would do just as well
Hypervigilance its called
Another way to control
And avoid the threat
Of what might happen
But never does or maybe
It will if I let things slip!
He wears that badge
Yesterday watched GetLive performance at Chapter Arts.
Today sitting in the beer garden. He came in wearing
that badge a camouflaged service rucksack. Says everything.
We got to talk. He’s waiting for combat stress to do their stuff.
He needs it. Is what he says. He talk of waiting times…
for appointments. I think I need to come out of retirement.
I’m not silent anymore.
.bread and butter.
four slices.
she brought him four slices, butter
on white, fairly thick. he piled it high
with breakfast ingredients, and chips.
an hefty lad, avec workmates.
she asked if i will like toast or bread
and butter.
the latter and let it be white.
the coffee was milky.
sbm.
Write
Write
You said
You write about betrayal
I thought
I wrote about loss
We could both be right.
Rob Cullen
West End Apartment (excerpt)
I liked to walk alone
at dawn and watch
the first light travel
the length of the avenues
with Copeland’s Quiet City
playing in my mind
and that trumpet
in my thoughts
and in my ears
and in my eyes.
It was a time
when my words
were stolen.
Change (excerpt)
Clouds gather
darkening slowly.
Even as I watch
the air grows
darker colder.
Fall And All
“This sun is beating down too hot, too early. Can’t you see how this new spring is fooling the trees? They like it at first, unfurling their leaves in premature green, then July hits and they think…
Source: Fall And All
A Sense of duty (excerpt)
I listen to the voices of those
talking quietly of their day
of their worries,
and sharing the joy
of milestones missed
the sadness of memories
and the missing of you.
I watch men who stand
leaning, crying in a grief
that has no sense of ending
of the keening, of the longing
to hear your voice
before the sound
of it is forgotten
and that dread of forgetting.
There is a kind of peace here.
