A household wakes late.
We're silent movie stars
Moving at comic pace.
Bags are grabbed, dropped, swapped!
Ties are lost, lost, found!
Toast in transit. Crumbs.
"No crumbs in the car!"
Then.
The silence of the scrammed.
Now where's that car vac?
@IMcMillan
I wake late. My dog's already at the back door. He gives me a "where you been!!?" look. I apologise to an animal who relies on me for everything. I let him out. He digs in a corner of the garden, then proceeds to treads mud into the hall carpet on his return.
He holds a grudge.
The edges of morning are draw and quickly fill with colour. Brick gables blush with the first touch from a courting sun. Frost-tipped grass dares to wear diamonds. Smoke is charmed from a chimney. It fades as it reaches for a clear sky, but not before it becomes its only cloud.
Two men in the corner shop, hunched over a scratch-card, itching for good luck. The news stand is weary with war. Margarine is on offer. I can't believe it's not butter. Store-own Cola stands between Pepsi and Coke, like a metaphor for the world. I can't believe it's not better.
I fell out with the Morning
So I hung out with the Night
But without any warning
Found I had lost the light
I tried to use a candle
I tried to light a way
But Night it couldn't handle
Reminders of the Day
Both Times were most inopportune
So now I hang with Afternoon.
Rain falls. Times Tipp-Ex. C̶o̶r̶r̶e̶c̶t̶i̶n̶g̶, altering, reality. It will take a million downpours or more for the garish stone lions to erode from the garden of the posh house down the road (they take pride of place). But only the rain's allowed to roar, King of this urban jungle.
Quick trip to hospital to return equipment. Consultants caring for coffee. Builders in boots tread shiny floors. I share a lift with an old man in a gown and his porter, who's wheeling him from Here to There. I look away, partly out of respect, and partly out of a fear of There.
Catch the last dance of slow petals unfurling
Watch the first dance of those petals start curling
Know that the gift of each breath of each flower
Is wrapped and unwrapped over twenty four hours.
My old lawn is full of twigs
Blown in from trees unseen
My old lawn is full of twigs
And next door's trampoline.
Screams from the wind merge with those in the playground to become an infinite scream. It's more Monster Munch than Edvard Munch, as Monday Morning finds these kids loading up on starch and fizz. Untethered hair flies in all directions, a million kites flying and turning and fighting in the (h)air. Everyone looks like they're in a bad 1980's music video. The smoking, vaping, wheezy kids, provide the dry ice and the faux cool. I turn the car around and think of dancing in the street.
A terrible music video.
Whistles, Creaks, and Groans. A firm of Dickensian lawyers and the odd sounds coming from my house this squally morn'. It's turned itself into a wailing wind chime. Every gap is probed by the gusts. A physical examination of such intimate nature I can almost feel the house wince.
Sunday papers thicken in appreciation of the time at our disposal. Bloated colour supplements implore us to travel or garden more, but adverts for elasticated trousers somehow know we're far more likely to follow the TV guide or recipes for cake.
I breathe in and think of summer.
Calm as a crypt, the day after the storm. A clear sky. A clean slate. Fortunately mine stayed on my roof. Those leaves will be swept, put in a corner, then blown away again. Life is all about keeping your leaves in order. Be happy with your little pile, and help others sweep up.
I popped outside to try and find
Nice words with which to play
When I got there
The stormy air
Jus bl w th m all awa
Like a stunned mouse at a cat's paws I'm unsure if the wind wants to play or take my head clean off. The trees know better. They tremble in unison. Hardy, winter perennials earn their name. TV aerials are the weather's tuning forks. Paper dances. Recycling boxes shift nervously.
Skittish Moon, coquettish Moon, wearing veils of cloud; deflects, reflects, commands, every stray photon to dance upon my lawn. They skip, trip and cavort in frosted excitement, barely balanced on this mirrorball freezing point. My garden glistens, bathed in Moonlight's sweat.
Monday's been dipped in water and is now drip-drying in the breeze. Clouds stumble and bumble past the No Waiting sign in the sky. A waxing moon flits between these congregations in a flick-animated version of itself. A car alarm wakes everyone in the street apart from its owner.
The luxurious inner-lining of a Sunday morning. Hope is being dressed as Spring. The magical lengthening of daylight. Time's turn-ups are turned down. It's a magic trick everyone can explain but no one can perform. How does Winter saw us in half, yet Spring put us back together?
Mattress-topper clouds comfort a night sky. The wind keeps trying to garden-hop across fences, rattling wooden panels with gusto, of course. Branches become the wind's brief cheerleaders. Then the freight train of sound has passed. Silence. Stars sleep on. The wind breathes in...
The clouds are dark bruises on the sky. A cat picks carefully at a torn bin bag as if it's examining an unexploded bomb. A dog walker says hi. I say hi. It's all I've said out loud today. A paving slab crack has grown. Perhaps it's going crazy? That cat hasn't exploded yet.
Hanging in early morning's darkroom
We are negatives and positives
Old ways in a digital age
Some days we're blurry black and whites
Some days our heads are cut clean off
We all strive for the picture-perfect pose
Forgetting most life exists
Outside shutter clicks
I'm just back from having my late auntie's house valued. A house I hadn't visited since I was a kid. What struck me more than her fading photos; more than her garden full of colourful memories, more than the way my now giant frame seemed so out of place in her tiny bungalow, was a half empty tea caddy standing alone in her kitchen. Half full of teabags that she had bought but would never drink. I suppose they will be cleared away by a man and a van at some point. The detritus of her life marking the very moment of her passing. I'm not sure why it had such an affect on me. Perhaps it was the sight of such an everyday object measuring the passing of my auntie in such an ordinary way. It wasn't enough.
Later, in a box in her bedroom, I found a collection of fridge magnets she had collected from her many travels around the globe. I took one, from Borneo, and placed it in my pocket. When I got home I put it on my fridge. It's a reminder that we are more than the moment of our passing. We are where we've been, who we've seen, and what we've done.
I settled down for a cuppa, and the teabags in my caddy marked my own moment in time.
It's Recycling Day in the street.
It's Recycling Day in the street.
Next door's back on the Shredded Wheat. Other next door's back on the red wine. That polystyrene won't be collected. It'll slowly turn to snow.
The students have forgotten again.
The students have forgotten again.
A black and white morning leaches into colour. The cloudy skies of the East peel away to reveal a dirty orange, a rumour of a colour, in segments so far from the horizon that they're not yet to be believed. The blue/green grass has the illusion of choice from Morning's Palette.
At the corner shop the talk is of the Winter Olympics. We reach a consensus that figure skating is boring, ice hockey's too fast, and curling's too slow. I actually like the curling but I was caught up in the moment.
One man mentions he's been skiing at the Milton Keynes Snozone.
The Library of Life has many shelves
And no fines for late returns,
Take your time choosing your very best self
It pays to be a bookworm.
The gargling street drains of Sunday morning's ablutions. On our street on a hill, rainwater overflows from each grille it meets, a giant water-Slinky searching for gravity's end. Our tarmacked street gurgles and churns its disapproval. Nature flows under and over its concerns.
One day I was out walking
down my street,
and who do you think there
that I did meet?
only my imaginary friend,
he told me stuff
quite hard to comprehend,
he said I was the one
who was invented,
it left me feeling
quite disoriented,
if I'm not real
then can these words persist?
if you can read them
do we still exist?
Faint stars in a cloudless sky from distant suns that burn at night. Their light outshines their existence. Ghost stars hang in the night, memories of light.
We're made of stars. Starlight we'll become again. Who will stand and watch our light when it lands far far from home?
I thought I found a metaphor
Lying on the floor
But just like me, it's a simile,
Back to the drawing board.
Soft, gentle rain greets me as I open my back door. The very absence of light has somehow dampened its volume, allowing the street to keep on sleeping. Occasionally a drop or two, no more, blows in on the wind, and lands on my face. Touch and sound, drip-feeding me my new day.
Lines of tail-lights crawl up the hill, a defeated army of red ants marching 2 by 2 back home. A car brakes, setting off a chain reaction of brake lights down the hill. The ants are passing a message through the ranks
"Antpowder at 42-retreat!"
The prologue to a dawn-dark day, as first-person narratives stir in my street.
I ponder days in the dark.
Thoughts flowing.
Time flows.
"Days named after rivers!" I shout to nobody,scaring the dog.
Monday becomes Wye Day, of course, and Thursday's already Avon Day in our house!
I don't know why you look so full of pride
I don't know if the past is real or not
I don't know where you found my father's eyes.
just take a chance - try not to cheat
but do the dance - at rhythm's feet
it echoes through - the work you do
the beat before's - in front of you.
My dog barks at a corner in the kitchen & wakes the house. I check. Nothing there. My wife checks. Nothing. One of the kids gets up. Nothing. The dog still barks. We search for clues.
"Of course! Look! It's this he's barking at" says my wife.
Then I wake up.
Annoying, isn't it?
3 teenage girls, the chattering classes in my car. I understand 1 word in 3. I think a boy's upset one of them so now he's dead to all of them. A uniform inspection means none of them wear make-up and, "Oh my god, it's like the worst day ever!"
A man at the straits of Gibraltar
Was to marry but then he did falter
When asked "Who protests?"
The vicar undressed
And showed his true love at the altar.
Overnight, the small, open recycling boxes in our street have been robbed, plundered and scattered by the punch-drunk wind. The road and pavements are littered with paper and plastic. It's like we had a ticker-tape parade in honour of our great binmen.
But who'd clear that away?
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