Desperately Positive

I am desperately trying to uplift your spirit dear reader
But somehow the ducks want out

Dear autocorrect I cannot recall any ducks of my acquaintance
But fucks. Fucks I know a many!

I am desperately trying to share love
But the form love takes right now is anger
Now, wait a moment.
You might say.
How can anger be a form of love?
Because beyond the superficial crap
The depths of the being
Can do better
Love thy neighbor and all that

Anyway, where was I
Yes!
Desperately trying to cheer you up
Maybe this should just be an autocorrect poem
With German as second language
On my keyboard
This could get wild!

Wo waren wir?
Ach ja!
Verzweifelter Versuch euch aufzumuntern

Honestly this lockdown thing
is doing a number on the mountain climbing, iron stemming, mountain biking, kayaking self.
Where do people put all their energy?
Even my punch bag is out of commission with all the rain, garden is a mudbath.

So now that I brought you all back down to reality
Guess what
The worst is yet to come!

Just kidding
Well kinda
Bear with me

In the meantime
What’s your new lockdown skill?

Marathon blanket hugging?
Knowing by heart the intros of at least 20 TV shows?
Making eating lunch last a whole hour?

Braiding hair or beards?
Show me pictures!
Finding out just how long toenails grow in ten months?
Don’t show me pictures!

What are you proud of?
42 days without spilling coffee over my work!
Dropping toast and it didn’t land on the buttered side!
Got rid of half of my lockdown stone (definitely not a muscle gain…).

Sending you all a big hug
Stay safe
Stay sane
This too shall pass

Speechless

Just writing random thoughts
Are you all still hung over from 2020?

Just writing now
Because I can feel the words cueing up
They want out
A heated debate
Who goes first
The conjunctions are calling dips
And I can’t resist

But now what?

Too much noise for form
A verbacious whiplash
Without verbs

The count of nouns
Futile attempt at clarity
Chaos stronghold

So what if?

What if I just keep writing
Eventually form follows
Follows what?
Action?
Form follows function!
That’s it.

Writing is the function
Writing an act of clarity
Writing an act of clarification
Writing an act of creating form

So writing is both function
And in the end form

Does any of this make sense?
Did you notice my cleverly deployed grammar?
How is 2021 treating you?
Or are you still dissociating from 2020 holding breath until you can open the door of the storm shelter?

The words are still stuck
In the tumbling chaos
Of mind
Eventually they will all come out
One way or another

Ladeeda

Voices outraged everywhere
Self-righteous
Full of ego
Blinders fixed permanently
Hate filled
Artificially
Each day
By choice of echo chamber
I am offended
By what?
Choose current infliction here
…
Ignorance runs rampant
Delusion has guns
Chest thumbing until there are bruises
Snowflakes in camo

Mate who actually gives a shit about you? A nameless face in a screaming sea.

Adulation
A money maker
His biggest con so far

Who gives a shit about you?
I am actually asking you.
Family?
Friends?
Your dog?
Even your houseplants
Have more emotional intelligence

Mate. Start with giving a shit about yourself.
Love yourself.
Admire yourself.
Forgive yourself.
Be the superhero in your own story.
Do better. In your life with people who give a shit.

New Year’s Resolutions

6th of January 2021

Ah fuck off …

Dream a Little Dream

She laid sprawled on the couch
A heap of fat
Sleeping
Her hatred a halo around her
Dark hair pooling over white pillows
A white blanket
Draped desperately

So clean
The blanket
The pillow

So black
The soul
The heart

Suddenly my friend jumped
Muddy boots from hiking
On top of the heap
Walking all over the blanket
Dirty footprints EVERYWHERE

Purity soiled
Chastity
Who are we kidding

My friend laughed
Rejoicing
Stomping her muddy foot prints all over

Until the heap moved
Trying to give chase
But became entangled in the white blanket

New Neighbours

Or

There be Vampires

New Neighbours

I think they are vampires
Always dark windows
Shutters closed
Front and back
All day
Every day

And they are so quiet
Eerily
The occasional bump
A landing?
The coffin lid?

Rushed slipping into cars
With darkened windows
In silence
Always in silence
Well almost

Yesterday I heard a vacuum cleaner
Do vampires vacuum?
And he said he heard voices
I don’t believe him

It’s silent again
And dark
Shall I buy garlic?

Shadow Work

The Darkness Within

You need to face shadow work
Go into the darkness
Walk the path until it has become invisible
And then keep walking

For in the darkness lies your truth

Keep walking
Keep embracing
Keep forgiving
Yourself
Your perpetrators
Your demons

Keep walking

Where there is light
There is shadow
Lest we forget
What is lurking
Bring a candle along
On your walk
And love yourself
Through space and time
When light fails to penetrate the darkness
Love always will

Overwhelmed

Thoughts become stuck in my head
And like waves of a confused sea
They hit my consciousness
Unexpectedly without pattern

Unpredictable onslaught
All encompassing
The boat dives nose down
And disappears from sight behind a wave

Alternative Text Poetry

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I read an article about creating poetry for alternative text on images and really liked the idea, as often the images are difficult to describe and the reason for me making them are visceral so for equity of experience poetry seems the best approach. Without further ado. This is the alternative text poem for the images above:

Wintersun

Cold light
Fighting its way
Through cotton-soft snow clouds
A blue speck of sky
Plays peekaboo
Thistle seedpod-skeletons
Become bizarre antlers
Carrying the sun in-between
Mist sinks down from above
The fields are wearing fragile down blankets
The canal is frozen over
There is no wind
Snow muffles all noise
As I walk through eerie silence
Barr the crunch of my shoes in frozen snow

A Day in the Isle of Skye

Scotland

Lashes and lashes of rain
Are pelting the windscreen
Windshield wipers trying their best to catch up
We are on a mission
Dinosaurs were here
On Skye 166 million years ago

Seen
Not by humans

But their footprints
Rediscovered 
20 years ago
By two humans and their dog
Some sort of mutated hairy dinosaur descendant

We stand there
On slippery ground
Soggy feet
Soggy hats
The waterproofed rest withstands the elements

So we stand
Whilst water gently drips off us
Into the 166 million year old footprints
And our minds cannot phantom
That chunk of time
That time line
We can see this point in history right in front of us
Feel the imprint of the toes underneath our fingers
What we cannot see
Is the distance between here and then 

We continue on a cliff-walk
An overly excited father 
Beak full of worms
Tries to distract us from a nest
On the ground
Another dinosaur descendant 
A tiny could-be-dragon
Without fire but feathery wings

Is this where dragon stories come from?
Our–non dinosaur–ancestors finding bones
And skulls with prehistoric sharp edged teeth
Or is it because the hills look like sleeping dragons
Mist gently rising from overgrown nostrils

We walk along the cliff-edge
Basalt columns grumble underneath
They remember the dinosaurs
They have seen it all
Violent heat, emerging, cooling, changing, eroding
They watched
Watched on
And still remember a time when the animals
Whose fins we see emerging from our viewpoint
Looked quite differently indeed
Somehow the dolphins remind me of dinosaurs
Animals in-between
Sharp teeth, hunting, but for strange reasons
Like to play with humans
We watch them jump out of the waves
A waterfall is thundering next to us
Contributing to the decay of the basalt
With destructive powerful beauty

Somewhen in that chunk of time
Between here and then
Humans emerged
And as humans emerged other consciousness found an audience
Bound to place and nature
Essences of entities awakened changed from their slumber
Because humans live through stories
Humans want words that make-things-so 
Words that pack meaning into tiny parcels
Which they string into necklaces of being

So the beings awakened into a consciousness 
That limited them to the words and stories of humans
They knew they were more than that
The humans felt they were more than that
And so humans created rituals to grasp what their stories could not
And they left the places of these ancient beings marked 
To remember that there are stories that cannot be told
But humans like the basalt have changed
Keen edges softened
Ancient stories retold shifted and morphed 
Becoming echoes of their own memories
And with the stories the ancient beings too faded back into the landscape

However

Some rituals remained because they hold more than the stories could
So the fairy glen holds an infinity circle
A fairy hill has trees with colorful ribbons and gifts
Fires are lid on the longest night and the longest day
And when the sun dies and is reborn
The stories have changed
Yet
Yet
Yet our rituals hold fast
As we throw a coin in a well
And bind a bright ribbon on a tree
They know
And somewhere deep down we do, too
We hear the echo of stories never told