How To Remain Human This Year

We give a throwaway kiss
to strangers, to see New Year in.
We plant the seed with hope
it will grow, form fruit, to feed us.

CANNIBALISE THE CORRUPTION, I GUESS Ok? Everyone's dying. You're not special. You've a Tree in your stomach, Splitting the roof of your mouth, Leaves curled around teeth, and your skull Cracking like an ancient castle? Nothing I haven't seen before. Had three people...

I sit in quiet daylight
wondering if I should pray,
hearing mother cardinals echoing
my laments, an aural mirage
mutates into children crying
as a teacher hushes them into a corner,
quiet mice now…

Dead of Winter

If my inner child is kidnapped,
I’ll freeze my nightmares to that ole pole.
I don’t know how to use a lighter
is what I’d say if asked.

A Rumination

With ginger chai, lounged in the balcony,
Revisiting the years she and her spouse
Endeavoured for a better, self-owned house,
She takes a breath of content, finally.

Questions

We were always in the car that year the price of having a nice house in a nice area get in get
in it’s time to go where are we going our friends the supermarket the cinema the mall just for
a drive between banks of jaded shovelled snow

It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort
that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink
waiting for them to subside…

    Mean sister We are stuck in our own words, not hearing each other. Sixty-somethings, we may as well be six, throwing sticks down the beck or poking dolls eyes out of their sockets, scribbling on their perfect faces. We are well rehearsed, know our cues,...

I heard a calm, clear voice.
But not with my ears. Not my outward ears.
It wasn’t madness…