there’s not much you can do
when the planets
are telling you to stop

Can’t hear yourself think only the bass line
of a heart thumping. Your head’s clamped.

It is not like an egg cracking
or an exquisite shiver of shattered glass.

When I lost loved ones last year
I thought my childhood fears would return.

There’s a house in a suburb of between-the-wars pebble-dash & bay windows, where the soundtrack is sighs, tuts & bellows, the clash of plates & jangle of cutlery.

She gets into your bed
like when she was little.
Flowers grow out of the wardrobe,
moss claims the windowsill

I had a leaf in my hair when I arrived
the receptionist thought it was a hairclip

My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown

and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.

Molluscous receivers, would that you could
turn your talents inwards, and pick up
all that goes on in the cerebral swamp . . .