World service

It whispers, sibilant, static 

hissing snake insinuation

after the broadcast ends,

a monsoon of sound, deposited 

afar, in a garden, time zone aglow

with shortwave bandwidth aura,

forming the late night halo

of a post pub pass out

among the sofa debris 

and erotic disappointment.

Exotic familiar takeaway

in hand, half eaten, comfort

after the no show, she turned it on 

for company. Now she sleeps 

as the bulletin begins again.

In a remote province

of a distant dictatorship:

official denial of an outbreak. 

Tired

I'm tired. So tired.
It's not just fatigue anymore,
not something sleep can fix,
it's existential exhaustion.
I can't imagine not being tired.
I don't care any more 
about any achievements 
on which my reputation rests.
I can't be bothered 
defending a legacy
it took a lifetime to build.
Let the spivs and charlatans 
have their way. I surrender. 
I'm just too tired.

Coriolanus

Every ally will be an enemy one day,

every enemy a friend.

Learn to forgive and not to fight

or war will never end.

Funambule

We walk a tightrope through the clouds.

Stop and we fall to an uncertain fate,

so we keep going. We imagine it stretches 

between high summits just out of sight 

hidden beyond each other's horizon. 

We fantasise about that single bound 

that lets us leap from one to the next,

but one day, through a gap in the clouds,

we see the ground below, and recognise 

the course of rivers, the lie of the land,

and realise we have come full circle. 

Slow progress is the most we can achieve.

Dreams of an end are as fatal as giving up.  

In the final analysis there are only means.