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Beyond sunlit planes of sea and sand/Like the shade on my front lawn/Nightshadow creeps over continents/Cities light up in glowing clusters/While the deserts hide their campfires.
My social media feeds were awash with posts from my friends — many of whom are queer, disabled or on low incomes — worrying about their futures and the future of our earth. I saw countless posts with people saying 'That's it, I'm moving to NZ'. I completely understand the desire people had to give up — I felt it too.
I am transported to the sappers. In a pitch-dark deluge like this, gun turrets and slush banish daydreams of beaches and cobalt rockpools. Recollections of the birthday ballot, tremble of black and white TV in the corner. My fingers drag a crested envelope from the letterbox, the breeze brings ironic coo of peaceful doves.
Amber brethren unified over glazed tables, cracked leather chairs groaning under the burden of another weary apprentice. Here's to the blackened crust on a Parma special and to being pricked by an unofficial entry tithe ... Douse me in the balm of mellifluous chatter. Let me move amorously down through this molten journey until I am left suckling at the dregs in my comfortably reduced environ, tending towards something that approaches what some might call contentedness.
You could you call it coincidence that the week I'm asked to write on budgets, ours blows out. I call it life. Such is the cyclic nature of our 1.5-incomes-and-two-kids lives that just when we think our savings are safe, a new enrolment fee is due, the kids' jeans are suddenly a size too small and I've run out of nappies.
Anthony cleans gutters. Some people give him money. When he has enough he buys himself a piece of chicken. 'Where is your mother,' I wonder, 'who roasted fat chickens in our oven, and cooked giant pots of meaty bones for our dogs, her brown arms pitted with burns from our kettles?'
He drew fear from flood and seedless sun. She traded contradiction for curves and valley hips, verdant sod of earth, reckless drift of goats. When the bailiff came, the end of lamb and beef, she clung to rock and let the salt erupt ...
You don't get many words out of him, and when he does speak they always end in a question. 'It's gonna cost a lot to get new tyres, knowata mean? You're better off getting re-treads, knowata mean?' In our society there are hundreds of jobs that barely rate a mention, and armies of unsung workers who keep it functioning and well-oiled.
A cracked grey angel .. shadows a snatch of brown weeds .. in a Coke bottle. .. A marble stone reads: .. 'our loving son, died too young' .. he sleeps, snug in clay.
It's a decade since you died .. But they remain, a legacy of sorts .. I see you in the shape of my hand .. Rummaging for the nail .. That crucifies father to son
My first meeting greeting is almost hummed, vestment of thongs.. rough hands shake across meeting room circles of disposable chairs.. Avocado oils, unleavened bread and cheap coffee
Poem by John Foulcher.