Putt Putt

Live long enough to see

All the things you never thought to think to see

Stand here wistfully

And list for me

The colors on the clouds 

As wonder turns to knowledge turns to fear

I'll meet you on the virtual green

This is no metaphor

This is the putt putt you couldn't have dreamt of

Tell me you love me with toes dipped

In a rainbow river flowing skyward

Tell me you love me echoing through code

And I'll echo back, the words dimming

With each bounce

As echoes do

You thought of me leaving

Seeing your heaving heart

Tumbling overboard

Stand here blissfully 

And list for me

All the things you never thought to think to see

The color of fear fading to knowledge,

To wonder

 no shade in the snow

another day of hands piled on

we're working on distribution

the scarcity pulse is real 

when it's not perception

but the fact of not having what's needed

and all the passersby 

on the outside of the barricades 

too bright to look at

Intention

Here's to scoring many goals read the inscription, from mum. The ball was run over within the hour, it was still playable but now it had a bulge like a hernia and I sobbed because the inscription held so much hope for me, particularly since I was utterly shite at football.

Today, on realising I left Rowan's Peter Rabbit cutlery somewhere in the Poconos, I could barely get off the couch and honestly if Alice wasn't round I would have sobbed again. The cutlery was from my ancient godfather, Michael, who's been terminally ill for years, he still meets my mum at the gardening centre for tea and he unintentionally delivered perhaps my favourite moment of the pandemic when he got locked out of his email account and could only communicate through Jackie Lawson e-cards.

Imagine it, a flash animation of a cat causing havoc with the wrapping paper or a dog sliding on its arse 

down a snow bank and a panicked message at the end from a 95 year old man and yes this is exactly how

I want to misapprehend the future. How satisfying.

Stephen, who accidentally kicked the ball into traffic, gave me the exact same ball a week later, but it just

couldn't fill a hole that had opened up in me which I later discovered, to my complete surprise, I had 

stuffed with Beatrix Potter flatware. 

A Collection of Haikus

Unbothered King

When someone hates you

Pretend you are Ned Flanders

Hi-diddly-ho!

I Hate My Presents

Thank you for the scarf

I will use it to muffle

My cries of anguish

Manners

Good manners prolong

Unwanted interactions 

Not worth the toil

My Condolences

I’m sorry your man

Pursued sexual congress

With all here present

climate euphoria

I dreamt once of a brown winter; 

which is all that I’d typically known 

growing up in Mississippi always 

once or twice three inches of snow 

here and there, but always a muddy field

and dead grass with glistening red clay. 

Always green long-leaf pines. 

Geometric rows of pine trees,

a grid forest with a needle floor

always seemed like a room of doors. 

The trees seemed so holy to me as a child 

before I slowly learned they were planted 

there just to be cut down and sold. 

I dreamt of a Mississippi winter without snow,

 woke up to something warmer farther away

where once I learned winter actually was now 

a muddy field that I have known.

Strawberry Jam

across from you at the table

my elbow rests on something sticky

perhaps some strawberry jam 

fell off the morning toast

your hair is up

revealing your eyes,

two glimmering pleas

blink once, they worry

blink again, they hope