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Friday 5 January 2024

I Have Become a Wordless Thing

I make to press that
Little
Button
That wakes you.
I see (little else)
my reflection
In
Your
Midnight
Face.

Aah.
There you are,
Your light
Ripened
For the basking.
My will
Completely
Cooked
By you,
I become a
Wordless
Thing.

I don't see
Beyond
You,
Or hear but for what is
Yours
To say.
I ignore my many loved ones.
I am
Rapt;
Carried away. 




Saturday 4 March 2023

Facets

1. All at once it comes
Rushing like a hapless wave
To break on my shore.

2. She plays quietly;
A petal, a smallish thing,
Ever emerging.

3. You made that for me.
You're such a smart, bastarding
Marketing machine.

4. I wish I was you,
Sculpted, in tight red and blue,
But you aren't real.

(because you're Spider-Man.)

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Friday 21 October 2022

We Would

Down in the water, in the river, down by the lake, the stones are slick.
We would play there as children, having avoided those nettlesome geese.
We would look down to the small reservoir to watch the tadpoles dart.
We would. We would. We.
Cars would come. Where the water was low, a road crossed through.
We would scamper barefoot to the side. We would wave
as the ocean parted, wondering if the car was too low,
would the water get inside?
Would it gum up the works?
Ruin the carpets?
We would hope that things would go wrong, because of course
we would. That's who
we were. We were. We.
Yes, we would tramp the riverbed, peering downwards,
seeking out fishies, but our footfalls would loosen the muck,
turning the water opaque with our boorish disruptions.
"That'll teach you" the river would say 
in that cocky way that rivers do and
we would reply by stomping, and splashing,
tearing up pebbles and rocks to hurl every which way,
not understanding that the water would only settle
and the fish would only return once we monkeys had gone away.
But, following the habit of our lifetimes,
all of yours, some of mine,
We would rage. We would. We. 

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Tuesday 1 February 2022

Jacaranda, for #FlashFicFeb

Everything that passed beneath the eaves of the jacaranda died. In droves, they died, and all at once each fall, as the last of its periwinkle blooms gave up the ghost and drifted down to the hardening earth. 

     Why did they die? Nobody knew the answer to that question, and once it was discovered and publicised, no person was willing to walk close enough to cut the thing down. Attempts were made using robots, remote controlled vehicles, and in several cases, explosives, but electronics selectively (seemingly based on whether they might be used to harm it) ceased to operate within a quarter mile of the great tree, and the bombs all graciously refused to go about their business and explode. Even a controlled burn refused to singe even its most wayward branches. 

     To make things worse, the jacaranda stood in the middle of a once well travelled nature reserve well known for its veritable labyrinth of interesting hiking trails. 

     The tree hadn’t always been so passively murderous. It had started a few years ago, when all at once a couple hundred hikers, dog walkers, their dogs, and a pair of park rangers suddenly went toes up by way of sudden, identical, and unexplainable brain aneurysms.

     At this point, you understand, the only link that was made was that all of these people had in recent memory attended the nature reserve. The government closed in on the place with an uncharacteristic and remarkable alacrity, shutting it down to the public and sweeping through the place in full nuclear PPE. 

     In a three month investigation, they found nothing to explain the deaths. No exceptional levels of radiation, no dangerous poisons, and certainly no explanation as to why it would be that all of these people died in the same moment. What they did find was a lot of dead wildlife scattered throughout the park; birds, bugs, and beasts of every local variety. The reserve remained closed to the public and all was quiet for nine months. 

     Then it happened again. Around a quarter of the scientists and officers who had entered the area had suddenly dropped dead, it was two days earlier than last time (affording for strong winds agitating the blooms) but all at the same moment, 33 people dead, gone, and beyond all help. That's when they realised that it was the jacaranda.

     So it stands there. Yesterday they tried to blast the roots of the thing with a firehouse attached to a tank full of strong acid, but if salt, napalm and weed killer didn’t work, I very much doubt this is going to do it. 

     My son and his girlfriend went in there on a dare. Idiots. 

     It’s October. 

     Does anyone have any ideas?



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Saturday 5 September 2020

Deep Cold, a poem by Adam Common, poet

 Deep is
The light of
The Autumn
 Sun that
Spills between
Our two
 Lungs.

 Static
The time as
You shift, breathe,
 Allow
The stuff of
Warm dreams
 Out.

 Cold as
The white night,
Snow capped and
 Bleak as
The roofs that
Line our
 Street.

 Thin now,
The veil of
My dark and
 Deep eve.
Static so
Not to
 Wake

 You so
Soft beneath
The cold of
 Sheets and
Me so warm
Outside
 Them.