Where questions find answers

This spider is not having nightmares about censorship. With eight eyes I have seen THEM jump from unmarked cars. Felt the Magnum bootsteps cross our threshold. Heard their balaclava breath. They come for you, not me.

 

In the recess of a window, I lie low. Scuttle down those cracks you never see, stalk the dusty under-cupboard. There, with the cache of books you knowingly hid, I need no light. Rest invisible with your companions:

 

Atwood, Morrison, Kobabe, Orwell, Hosseini, Spiegelman, Vonnegut, Joyce. And three more years. I count them: all that time to read. Ignore distractions. Focus only on that single strand – untugged. Until it is.

 

x. 2025

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002kkmj/storyville-the-librarians

Thirty Days

Withdrawing into itself, this long year

reframes its course, stumbles to November silence.

The season of damp socks and clogged gutters.

 

There’s a loosening of grip, every future

tense with the rustle of pavements, their amber drift.

Confess: not one leaf knows where it will fall.

 

Driven by tailwinds of our past, you’ve reached

that place you can let go. A nation at half-mast,

all cable ties and cheapjack manufacture.

 

Let colours fly. Until starlings gather

there are few enough birds to fill the sky. Sodden

after storm, a frayed, bedraggled prospect.

 

x. 2025