I’m disquiet in the realisation of the futility of teaching the youth, younger each year, they’re imprinted with antiquated ideas of the past, growing evermore ancient and defunct.
Prose
In the Morning
I don’t know if she likes the morning, nor if I do either.
But today’s a clear peach and pastel blue.
It seems the toll of work and divorce have hollowed this Lucian girl.
Our Blue Mountain blend yet to be had.
She has a home, sons and plans to renovate.
In the morning she’s ripped from the sanctuary of the night’s implausible ether
Again she all anew performs perfunctory morning routine. Awoken defeated.
Return
Silence paralyses, or so it would seem to those with empty papers and momentary words.
A reprieve in a blink of summer, the drudgery of the United Klouds vacate.
I’ve rediscovered my world, as if a marital feud ceased with a glance of all its bounty.
Beauty, peace and a true love, I cry in refrain.
Part of Something
I read somewhere that parents spend less time with their children than 40 years ago.
And this thought spins in my head as I see your daughter in silence,
Her hands plaited on her lap. Her mother the other end of the 312.
Partisan extremism seems to be on the rise these days.
We all want to be part of something.
Right…
With rise and fall of right and all
Moving on again to its peak from finish
I wonder if your love for me will diminish
As in the past some of us were strung
upon the most local yew
and I fear I will be forever a hue askew
an other,
diverse
from the rest of you.
My admission, My love
The air is voilent today,
and I reflect on the too long it’s been
since I’ve written to you;
about how my fingers trace the subtle valleys of your back.
How my eyes bat away your tangling tresses
as I whisper kisses behind your ear.
Since I’ve used far too many words to deliver a message I tell you daily.
But my live performance is never as eloquent as my literary self.
My three word admission my gun, bullet, my entire arsenal.
I worry if it is enough. Perhaps…
To offer a humble love in its raw form.
But if you wished
I’d gather the words of love from all languages,
to uniquely submit to you each day
my admission,
My Love.
This Is Art (!)
This is real Street Art.
Passing snap-backed supra-beings say gawking at the Cass-Art aerosol cans
spraying a haute-couture satire of our post-modern globe.
You see this Street Art represents something;
the impotent critique
of artists whose Guardian reading parent’s
lamented Maggie’s closure of the mines north of London,
while saving for their loved one’s housing deposit.
This Art covers the vandalism of before.
Those graffiti cans smeared the marks of a pre-developed community.
What message did that graffiti have?
Nothing legible to those subscribed to The Guardian nor Mail.
Nothing at all, save
the names of the former youth of the estate,
it now priced to evacuate its dutiful placeholders,
so that those formerly lamenting the closure of Maggie’s mines, now
have a place for their children to pursue their adult childhood fantasies.
Once Was You
The crook of her mother’s brow
shapes her earth toned world view,
reducing glitter to dust.
Grains of sun flee her eyes,
washed away
rhythmically lapping at her cut glass cheeks.
Each breath, drawing in a fearfully rose future;
fragile desires dashed
within her insecure moods.
Her palms gasp – parched.
Feet unmoved from where she stood
when she first said hello.
J.C. FitzDerick 