Fly free, my love.

Slice the drizzle over Mytholm,

and still higher, hovering over bogside clumps,

homes to memories of air that once passed through.

But not too fast.....I aim to catch you.

THINKS....

waves are dizzying 

this prison bubble I am in

and all that stops me drowning
is its liquid skin

I anguish to be breezed away

and realise my dreams

before this current one more time

a nowhere whirlpool seems 

first published on http://alexandarshippocampus.blogspot.com 2009

OBSERVING MILL ROAD

Two females and a fat man

making shuffling sounds behind me,

letting me know they want to overtake

on a pavement three feet wide, and

eleven khaki-coloured alcoholics in a recess

caught in stop-frame as their black and gold

temptation tins are poised-but-not-quite-tilted.

Three black men in overcoats, bustling

like baptists planning to proselytise,

one caucasian crisply crossing towards Costa

with its hotspot. Kelsey Kerridge Leisure Centre

hosting a swimming event. This time the cranes

are very blue, not tinted by a low sun fuzzing

weekday afternoon aerosphere. I’m home,

and wondering what it’s like to have somewhere

to go with somebody whose company I enjoy. 

Solitude is for the choosing, and I wish there was

an app I could download to give me family

in the flesh, at the tapping of a finger.

But, based on past experience, sod that.

FUNKY POSTCODE

A low sun fuzzes the tree line mistily at Parker’s Piece,

and the sounds of stunt cyclists become a funky groove.

Halogen headlights wanly pierce the aerosphere and

a plane crucifixes across, above. I am returning,

I am returning to the postcode where my spirit thrives.

Did I hear somebody thinking out loud, “Where is this?”

Do I wish to spoil the magic by explaining?

BETWEEN READER AND LISTENER.

Opposite shores connected by the

walkway wavy as a woodland path

which zooms between chunks of air

you could imagine to be anything

suited to the mood of the moment.

Neural network some might speculate

could be what comprises soul, suspended

in cerebrospinal fluid, all gates open

to process insights those neutered

by normality seem always to reject.

Each successful poetry workshop

is a nurturing occasion.

MONROE

The boat's bow-wave is a silk scarf trailing

from a woman's neck, and sun burns the edge of

everything that guards my eyes with inadvertent silhouette.

The water's dark; silk's appropriate to convey mid-tones
in this black and white movie Marilyn might have

been in, face cigarette-smoke-paling.

MONDAY: COMPLEX-PARTIAL SEIZURE ONE

Ochre overcoats retreated into focus as we clockwised

from the dark of the wardrobe. You slid into the mirror,

glass sandwich where you live, aura harlequinning

blacksilver/pinksilver, blacksilver/pinksilver.......

I watched as your face made sounds of kisses to that 

all-of-a-sudden clay maquette of us,

and how it simultaneously returned them.

The aura harlequinned into dissolution.

I re-entered my alternative reality.

TUESDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE TWO

I have porcupine quills inside me.

In my eyes,

In my ears,

In my feet,

In my legs,

In my hands, 

In my arms,

In my face,

In my back,

In my bladder,

In my colon,

Everywhere,

And mostly in my head.

My very own porcupine, 

An old acquaintance to be

O, so wary of, 

Like the pen that reappears

In the hand of each successive neurologist.

And my porcupine becomes bored.

And it goes, without saying goodbye.

Christ, as if I care.

WEDNESDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE THREE 

I velvet brained

into the cloud hanging steady

within the bus’s window.

She hunched around porcelain eyes.

Her thoughts came to me as if through headphones:

Who do you think you are to make me stare at you like this?

Drop your eyes and show some respect. 

Ah yes, yes. Of course. She had witnessed

automatisms which had imprisoned her mind

between two instalments of my consciousness.

THURSDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE FOUR  

Half a mile away across three fields 

the diesel train looks like a red bodkin 

pulling trackside trees into a ruche.

Tromboning the tracks, 

sunshine bouncing off each passing window

flashes me into a safe mystery.

I have already visited this place, 

where nothing changes, or needs to.  

Curlicues of elder stitched
on a hawthorne screen,

mallards rinsing.  Perhaps I will stay.

But the red diesel bodkin pulls a small void 

behind it through the ruche.  

Woods re-form into fenland horizontals, 

the trombones note goes limp.  

It was the same once before, I think.

FRIDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE FIVE 

I tingle on a winter Friday, nine pm.

A double-decker bus bursts from behind
the terrace of houses masking a bend.

I can hear the chord that starts

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT: G7A5

When next the song begins at noon in August, 

an indigo sky might blaze with yellow windows.

I doubt I’ll remember why.

SATURDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE SIX 

In the pointillist drizzle of  Todmorden,

People wearing weekday clothes

Moonwalked by Burnley Road,  drifted

On the tarmac rivers making the park rhyme.

There was this loop. There was this loop.

There was this loop. There was this loop.

There w……

......the returning view

Through speckled window was not

Entertaining any longer but I noticed

That the bus had moved considerably

Further up the route towards Lancashire .

“Cheaper than watching a movie”,

I thought.

SUNDAY: COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE SEVEN 

I had a song in my head which wouldn’t go away.

Big wheel keep on toinin was the first line of the chorus.

And now I am fixated by this water wheel, inside the cafe.

Beautiful, grand, thudding, hissing, geometric iron friend.

But it is becoming another trigger. I ought to leave here.

Sod it, what is there to lose?  A few seconds of consciousness?

And half a cup of coffee, hopefully spilled on somebody else’s lap.

The constant rotating is fascinating yet boring.

The drips leave each spoke at the same place every time: the first 

as if from an eyebrow shaken, the second like a squirt.

And the same geometry rocking back and forth.

Sure enough, here comes the seizure.  Nothing more than a tingle,

puckering of lips, chewing movements, interrupted breathing.

Piece of cake. Thinks: I deserve one of those to go with this coffee.

And from behind the counter a new tape starts to play:

Creedance Clearwater Revival's Proud Mary. How appropriate.

EPILEPSY WARRIOR

I am the one in one hundred;

eating a full english breakfast in Brian’s Deli,

making hangers rattle on the rails in Oxfam,

expelling swift vapour feeling the texture of

a bridge’s November parapet, puzzling myself

each time my brain deploys a symptom without

my consent, easily finding bigots and fools

with whom to pick a righteous fight, or educate
to put their mis-conceptions right.

I am happy to be the one.

Note: At the time of writing, one in every hundred people worldwide have epilepsy

          

FELT FOOTSTEPS

Felt footsteps on a steel bridge

in a mist. Beneath the paths' claw

a common, grey sunk into green.

Soon-to-be-splashed-by-learners-

river reflects a man who’s straight

from the front of a fridge-freezer.

Cartoon scarf in lines parallel

to his flapping trouser bottoms,

quiff and satchel. Does he hesitate

mid-stride or is your brain racing?

Has everything stopped? No.

You are still striding with fake

self-assurance. A medicated stumble

is always on the agenda during

walks in the afternoon, just as

the levetiracetam takes another

chunk of confidence away.

Soon coffee in the Box cafe.

HOW TOUCHED BY EXPERIENCE

Immersed in air the steel and alloy

connecting concrete of opposite shores.

Walk with easy steps, never avoiding

cyclists sedate or energised at ridiculous level,

steering clear of buggies packed with Tesco bags

and toddlers being politely spoken to.

Among oceans containing infinity

are neural networks which comprise one’s soul.

Personal space may insulate or host cognitive adventure

on this ninety-metre journey, the bridge’s structure

unchanged when one returns with incalculable

new connections in one’s brain.

How many of these would it take to transform

a wishful thinker into an existentialist?