Evolution

I sometimes question our existence:
why?
where?

Children crying, dying in Africa. How is that fair?

Teenagers, an entire life ahead of them,

slitting their wrists,

rope around their necks.

Why don't we care?

Old man disgusted at a gay couple kissing,

shakes his head,

goes to church.

"Why doesn't God listen to my prayer?"

Somehow forgets the thousands of men

he killed during the war. He exits,

slams shut the door.

We are more ashamed to talk about sex

than we are about war.

Woman with a bruised cheek,

lying on the bedroom floor.

"He said it'll be fun,

until I became his whore."

President talking about a wall
to stop people coming in.
Anyone else remember the Nazi
and all the Jews they killed in Berlin?

I sometimes wonder: isn't evolution supposed to make us better?

Where is God, and how do I send him a letter?

Sunflowers

It's beautiful, watching you

undress beneath the English sun.

Come here, come out. We're not done.

Higher, upwards, to the heavens above -

all in the name of true love.

It's poetic, staring at you

grow and not knowing why.

Earthbound, wishing you could fly.

Insignificant but with meaning.

I know you're tired, you're leaning.

We wait and wait for you to rise,

as one lives and another one dies.

Hide and go seek

in the middle of the night.

It has to be perfect. Just right.

Then you yawn your way out,

incredible, considering the drought.

Life makes sense, sometime,
if you walk backwards
on a steep steep climb.

Often, though, it doesn't;
curveballs are thrown
plans are blown
a dog just lost his bone
and he's all alone.
Millennials on their phone
in a tea-shop eating a scone
wait, is that a drone?
Stitches are sown
the Queen is still on her throne
illegal gases in the ozone
and we're all so desperate to atone.

Instead, we should be planting
sunflowers in our back garden.
I beg your pardon.
Instead, we should be falling
in happiness, deeper and deeper.
The good things in life are cheaper.

Comma,

Chaos is King's Cross's middle name.

I wander without direction or an aim.

No one smiles, except the little child.

Everyone else has been exiled.

So they mutter about their rich lives,

as a train leaves and another arrives.

I wonder what gives them pleasure

when not basking in grey weather.

I lose myself until I see you,

and then, a breakthrough:

we are not them, they are not us.

Us, we'd rather get the bus.

Us is board games on the floor,

in Porto Koufo by the seashore.
On the dock of the bay like Redding,
bad dancing at a Greek wedding.

In the middle of Gerrard Street,
I heard your heart beat.
Hey there, Mr. Tambourine man,
come live with me in a caravan.

Here, until the sand runs out.
In perpetuity, with or without
a sky studded with fullstops
and you, forever my comma

Somersault

You asked me why I don't write anymore:

I lost the spare key to heaven's door.

It's been barricaded, locked, for years;

nope, can't open it, not even with tears.

I know where it is but I just can't get it.

It's buried deep down a grit-filled pit,

once crowded with innocence and hope,

mocked for its resemblance to a tightrope,

except there is a pole with which to balance,

but where's the fun in that, where's the challenge?

I lost it when I was told to go swimming with the sharks.

"But I'm a little guppy", I said. "No, or you'll lose marks!",

as if life was this big tournament, only I was not aware.

You have to blow the whistle to scare away the bear.

But then I somersault back into existence,
unfamiliar with the path of least resistance.
I look at you and suddenly everything's alright.
I can go to sleep now. Good night.