There are too many to read
or understand –
no chance
in our burning time
of warmer days –
no time left
between climbing high tides
We will never comprehend
what we see
when we look
overhead at spitting lights
beamed at 186,000 miles
per second
And then even more bared
by your long-gazed appraisal
as we chart
our growing ignorance
of what is beyond our reach
No time left for us
to fuck them up as well
In that moment
when your cup tips
you will sip
on emptiness
It is already too easy
to taste nothing –
too easy by delineation –
another failure
but a profitable design –
a greedy manipulation
We pass tipping points
as lost time is re-defined
by low mutterings
about our obvious losses
but still not openly
noted –
not tabloid-known –
Still unseen less stuff
Enter no payments
against overdue bills
Forget out-of-print
backorders sought online
Dismiss forthwith
learning other languages
Possibly embrace
Morse Code’s flat voice
Forget your mortgage
and overseas trips
Come with me under
a protective stairway
Pray – It is now too close
to that fearful time
of no refills or top-ups
Old bombs will drop
It is impossible to maintain
a rooted perspective –
Heraclitus observed
as he openly wept
It is not the same river
but we are also
not the same people –
that will be my shooting stick
to lift me from stiffnesses
of age and old iniquities
Those rivers now rise
under too-warming urges
My car’s curved high glass
requires less screenwash
through summer-flown months
There are no insects to smash
All through it my kids sit blind
behind their bright-eyed phones –
we do not know how much less
they see on their screens now
For WM, on yr 15th
It is now that time
we scan around
and make honest
our current account
of fouled landscapes
and our – ever – endless
opaque cloud makings
by cheaply-oiled flights
over raised high banners –
bearing boasts of growth
and much-much-wealth –
as if such heavy hauls
leave no poisons – no trace –
no residues – no spillages –
no inhaled lead in blood
And tell them how
it will be
in ten years time
or twenty more –
or whichever
we can hope to bear
And look with me
into their eyes
and say –
Kids this will soon be yours
to fix – Good luck
Hear them – those
too-near rushes
of combustion over tyre-rubbering
There – beyond my fence
I am just fifteen yards
from others’ entered destinations
This is a hermit life
but one with too much –
too much man-made stuff – such is soon useless
My sleep has re-aligned
as it did thirty-odd years earlier
to that of shift workers – once more an hour earner
I am a slow returnee
to my hollow house
of paid-for slept protection before one more day
This Bank Holiday Monday
sucks on my date-fixed time
as I lie bared-as-born on my artificial lawn
I must plant
some lavender in pots
My garden is not an insects’ paradise
My skin will blemish
under our turned-to sun
as my spread chemical vest of UV block – of factor fifty
unlocks and rolls off
under man-made laws
God wasn’t always for burning our butt-naked torsos
