Kastanie

I felt the scented smoke of chestnuts burning 
among the clinging reek of old damp leaves, 
hazy, catching at my breath, 
falling to the bottom of my lungs; 
while I ripped up the tracks of my life behind me
as I walked, a purpose in itself, 
half-lame, within approximate direction; 
cast out – or walked away – from our chosen home… 

Searching for the borders of community 
but lacking any risk of crossing into “theirs”… 

It’s complicated, as they say, 
containing layers on layers and mysteries – 
such as how the crank and dumb and ill-informed 
and leaders unfit for truth can conquer – 
while the future ebbs away across the water, 
decisions turning water into oil and oil into distress… 
and Demos flounders, self-absorbed and slavering
over brazen idols, especially devoted to their feet of clay ~ 

~ Forgetting those who’ve shared our pains,
against whom we found ourselves by misadventure. 

I am lying low, a little low, for now. 

Valediction for a year

Goodbye to you, two thousand and nineteen, 
without regrets.  A year that fled: 
lived through in disarray –
nothing new or unexpected there – except 
it let those bastards steal the future, 
taking out a mortgage on their souls 
redeemable against our children’s lives
without responsibility.

Goodbye, two thousand and nineteen: 
My beloved dog outlasted you / but only by three days 

Practicals

Sliding down a ladder-worth of concepts 
from my makeshift eyrie in the sky – 
blown almost-out-of-mind while scanning 
the horizon for some-or-other threats – 
I fell into the glue-pot, push-of-pike 
across the ditch and sticking-in; 
to make progress from day-to-day, 
perhaps in the direction of tomorrow?
Reality 
enabled, when I stabbed an ice-axe
in the bones, the skull, of a beholder;
A clear-cut fall from grace, back-lit
against its own disfiguring defaults