some words
feel odd to say
to someone
but also
feel odd to say
about someone
many of them
seem to live
in the toolkits
certain types
of older male
writers
(who may
or may not
be winsome)
open to describe
young women
in their writing

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 10th September - winsome.

you carried something for me
the night i felt the need
to lie down limp on the hard
wet road with the cars sweeping by

sometimes people ship
too much darkness
to pump themselves
buoyant again
and so your hand, small
gripping mine as you lay
on that gritty cracked asphalt
helping me bail myself out

small, but strong
how the mountain slows its strength
to almost stillness because such immensity
can so easily overhwlem

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 9th Sept - gentle.

after eclosion
when the wings have dried
and the small, temporary
beauty of the butterfly
has been added
to the sum total
of the world
the sad
wasted marvel
of the womb
it grew to birth from
falls to earth
to undergo
its own
quieter
metamorphosis

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 8th September - chrysalis.

sticky floors
strobe lighting
bass heavy
(distortion)
pulses locked
they're gorgeous
still-frame sliced
in flickers
how could you
know better
when they're free
(distortion)
break and build
ride the swell
you can't see
them inside
cratered dust
desert dark
brief escape
but waiting
implacable

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 5th September - desolate.

by
every
last breath we
end up
a
ghostly
uncertainty long eroded
ended
regardless of desire

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 3rd September - beleaguer.

axed

ending this strange bond

i felt your gaze like a hammer blow

over drinks you hired the man you didn't quite believe would kill

under our bridge roses grew in the memories you dumped from the fast-moving car

often your touch burned the scars and flesh still raw from your strafing

indigo, blacked scarlet, venomed tongue

enjoy your freedom

and

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 2nd September - scathing.

weighted clouds - theatrical feelings
we lay panting beneath tall ceilings

longing for space we could call our own
trading philosophical leanings

street sweeper noises - gulls - fox screeches
sorrow - unconventional meanings

tented in rented sheets - sky-sheltered
yet unsettled by astral growlings

whisper voiced - screen tanned - blessed light-walkers
ghostly in our most carnal couplings

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 1st September - sombre.

#Ghazal well, kind of...

small soft berries
for small soft bellies
and i remember how
you lost your shit
completely
when we saw the giant
blubberies on the side
of the Marks and Spencer
at the service station
and how inconsolable
you were when we couldn't buy
blubberies the size
of tractor tires

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 31st August - blueberry.

it's a border
despite the light/heat/dry ice
the room squashes the sound
to something almost solid
this is a between
i am briefly untouchable
the aim is symbiosis
transition from many
to one to cast a single shadow
made from slightly too much sound
movement/feeling/senses overwhelmed
i dictate time
to everyone
when it works
there is nothing else
the ending burns like re-entry
but being reduced to ash
might be a sacrifice
worth making

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today - 30 Aug - stage.

that colour suits you
you don't always
want to suffer
idiot leering
but when you feel
the mood, the moxy
you wear it with the assurance
of your business armour
the comfort
of sweatpants and hoodie
the freshness
of a post-shower towel
the healing power
of duvets and blankets
layered around your
snotty face
the unabashed joy
of your skin
when you think
i'm not looking
and the tidal pull
of your skin
when you've
demanded
that i look

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today 29 Aug - tight.

i nearly scratched my name
into the wood, but scratched yours
instead, committing the future to
remembering those sequenced letters

our learning limited to parroting
the parroting teacher well enough
to avoid censure, badly enough
to avoid the exposure of praise

as outside sun and rain split leaves
i wished i had the guts to use my tongue
to carve your name from air but didn't, as afraid
the incantation would work as that it wouldn't

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today - 27 Aug - desk

piece scenes together
from bone fragments
left from the last time you exploded

that thing i do
incandescent containment
shatters me but saves the day players

you will not pay for a stunt team

you want me to walk
that line, hit that scuffed
tape mark

no script, no camera
no payment
just your cliched quirks

you know
not everyone
wants to be a star

what broken shadow of me plays back in your dreams

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 26th August - direct.

wearable cathedral
ghosts in both ears singing
lullabies and fight songs
and the testimony
of those who returned
from the darkness
and the lovers
and the haters
and the celebrants
of the pure joy of bodies
joined myriad ways
and the pulsing preach
of a million hearts
kick drumming
polyrhythms against
my own

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 25th August - headphones.

redeem my week of drudgery
give heart to hope again
i stitched your brand upon my skin
one drunken afternoon
a sacrifice to something more
than i could ever be
so, vertigoed in terraces
or claustrophically pubbed
i join the choir in rousing song
to hide my nervousness
that tiny ball of compressed air
my mood for next week carrying
the diff'rence between joy and pain
and nothing in between
redeem my week of drudgery
and put it in the net

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today 21 Aug goal.

a room
in which
a hundred cuties
all claiming
to be the one true cutie
woo those who
despite offering
the final
verdict
get no
training
in discerning
true cuties
from false
nor the wiles
and seductions
cuties will
employ
to win

although
this system
is better
than the one
under which
the only cutie
is the one
shrieked
in fever
dreams
by the inbred
hereditary
dictator
or the face
drawn on
the flaccid dick
of the man
with the guns

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today - 18th August - court.

ships swallowed coffee
brought on hundreds of camels
or unloaded from dhows
warehoused, traded
a hub for centuries
before an empire bypassed it
and smashed it
in the kitchen i pour water
tamp ground beans just right
screw top to bottom
sit the Moka on flame
and while pressure brews
and i wait for the gurgle
i wonder what mark, if any
the city outside my window
will leave on the world
whether that moment
has already passed

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 17th Aug - mocha.

i remember, vague
a glimpse through sick-day windows
horse, cart, rag and bone
man shouting words rolled into
a clarion call
later, older, bored, driving
i saw the same horse
on a small patch of waste ground
looking out of place
an echo of something lost
although perhaps scabbed
grass, smouldering fire smoke
sorted junk, mixed trash
broken edges of awful
modernity's bleak
cheapening of life's richness
was what i should have noticed

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today - 16th Aug - horse.

round the sound
like a ball of splash
hugged in tendrils
of silvery echoes
bouncing from the banks
of the river
ricocheting from tree trunk
to tree trunk to my ears
and i am snapped awake
unsure whether
it was fish or bird
or some ancient
tentacled dread
surfacing hungry
from my dreams
via the slow water

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 15th August - plop.

weight never lifting
slow burial without death
endlessly hunted

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 14th August - foreboding.

Apologies, too many characters.

#Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt #vss365Today prompt - 11th August - bimble.