Sometimes what I write – it can sparkle, or it can flop.
Sometimes an ellipsis seems more like a full stop.
I write for days on end when my brain just won’t shut up,
then I pause for four or five months or so – long enough to fill my cup.
“That’s not doing it properly!”
“A true writer writes every day!”
“You cannot be a writer and just shut yourself away!”
“What have you published? Not a thing – why would bother then?”
You can always tell by what they say if they’ve ever loved a pen.
They say to become “popular”
you must market yourself –
scream into the abyss
“THIS IS ME!”
Be loud, be present,
be everywhere all at once –
it is not about “Who?” but “How many?”
Clicks, screenshots, shares –
those, your markers of success
over “Did you like it, and if you did, why?”
One is always enough.
Even if it’s just you.
Clinging desperately
to the worn plastic
of a spinning top
teetering from side to side,
8 billion people
with callused fingertips,
aching muscles,
uncertainty.
I have this way of drifting and dropping
in and out of “normal” life,
in and out of tasks, of time, of timing
of accomplishment; wanting to accomplish
more than yesterday, but a little less
than tomorrow – what “should” be done,
what “must” be done – “must” or what?
“Could”, “can”, “might” –
I’m still getting to know them all
relics of a time where I was more carefree
but cared about what mattered.
Well, it comes and it goes, so it does.
It came and it went, so it did.
It passed right before us, a ship on the sea –
the time when we once all were “just a kid”.
Weird and awkward, odd and strange;
a set of quirks as broad as a mountain range.
Never really fit in but can’t seem to fit out –
what, really, is fitting all about?
If I can’t fit here, there, now or then,
will I fit somewhere – and if so, when?
Yes, yes you will – the “when”, I can’t say,
but when you fit with yourself,
you’ll be well on your way.
*Click* – a missile, flying through the air into the sea.
*Click* – some politician spitting “What I say shall be, shall be!”
*Click* – bird flu killed a lion, some otters and a bear.
*Click* – Kim Jong Un has a daughter and we’re supposed to care.
*Click* – twenty four new angles of Chinese spy balloons.
*Click* – ah, now that’s much better. I forgot about cartoons.
Life is work, uncertainty,
desperation to achieve –
it is plodding, it is pacing
it is the hope for a reprieve –
it is 9 to 5 and time enough
to think “What does it all mean?” –
it is all of that, but have you noticed
all good that happens in between?
I’ve read about the people
who laugh, then tumble down
ready to land across the sea
in an unfamiliar town.
They are more simple travellers
in heart and not in mind –
follow a path where it wanders,
wonder at what you’ll find.
Another kind of nomad
takes fewer steps, but still they see
it isn’t where you walk that matters
but where you want to be.
The sound of a dryer
on a cold, wet day
reminds me a little
of a conveyer belt,
or a set of gears
mounted on a wall,
spinning, turning, grinding
to accomplish something
much more important
in the grand scheme of things
than ensuring I have a fresh towel
or that my jeans
feel warm to the touch,
but then what is built
seems always
to be bought.
Just Little Green Buttons 