Our Fences

You get a feeling
that you are in this
on your own.
All around are
the little places
that we put aside
to call our own.
They have borders
and fences, even
trees, blocking
the others from entering
those little worlds
we make for ourselves
and our families.
Though nature will
not recognize
our divisions.
There a tree
marks the corners
of three places,
but is owned by none of them..
It is these
divisions that bind us
together as we try
to be be apart
looking for a safe place
in this world.

My poem 'Australia Ablaze' on Poetry24

My poem is here.
I volunteered to be an editor there and feel very privileged to have been accepted. It is a very good poetry site and I felt that it should not be allowed to fold up and the founders had decided to move on. I absented myself from the selection process for my poem.

Unemployed 2

It would be today
that they would ring
but they haven't.
So that is gone.

Last month I thought
the email was
quite promising,
but it was the usual.

It gets harder
to keep trying,
to have some hope,
to care.

Because, obviously
something is wrong
with me that only
other people can see.

I told someone that
it felt like I had been ejected
from society and that
feeling is still there.

I should be at my peak,
now, should be running
something, while I seem
to be the one who's running.

It doesn't help
that I don't believe,
anymore, in the things
that I should.

_________________
A work of fiction but with tendrils in reality.

Performance

It is art and life.
The lady plays her music
and the traffic warden
enforces the law.
The music is silver bells
and wind chimes
as background to
the small, life drama.
The artist gets more nervous
as the ticketer approaches.
Maybe she has been
moved on before,
she begins to pack.
While he glares at
a number plate and
writes on a tablet.
He glances over
but she is in flight
and hurries off.
He sees me watching
and we both notice that
something is missing.

Light Rain

I look back
and am transfixed,
as light through
raindrops, fills the street,
with points and lines of yellow light.
I remember the
strange quark sea,
and how we
float upon it.
Which seems to
join us together
because it laps
at all of our shores.
Yet the uncertainty of it,
the state of being unsure
is what divides us.
Now the rain
is gone,
moves on, and
I am left
enriched.

My poem at poetry 24

Two Dead in Bamiyan

Consumed

The sweet treat
lies despoiled.
Now, the gaudy,
shiny wrappings
overflow the box.
Where once they fit so well.
I, who have become
the destroyer of worlds,
take my rest