Ironing

We are going on vacation soon
I have to pack my bags on Sunday
I've been busy washing
Now there's stuff to iron
There's ironing all around the room

Blue denim jeans to go with white cotton shirts
Stiff single collars
With Charles Tyrwhitt's stamped metal inserts
The Levi's hems are fraying
Also on the pocket and up by the crotch

Wear is clearly on display
A dark blue top to go with the indigo corduroys
Soft merino wool for a would-be compassionate boy
The cords are from M&S their very best line
I should look good hopefully I will feel refined

Thick and thin socks and underwear of various kinds
Boxers and trunks from silks towards the sublime
Also the ones you wear when you stand in line
There's checks and there's plains and those without taste
Presents and purchases gifts perhaps chosen in haste

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Shedding

You do not need to worry if indeed worry you might I am not going to forget about you rather I am intending to shed light on all what you have gifted me into a new work

Indeed I hope to shed all that life has gifted me thus far into a search for soul a search to enrich in a non-religious way my thoughts on spirituality

I feel to be commencing this work from a good place I am in good health I am of sound mind I have a job which does not tire me unduly and which leaves me with sufficient time to contemplate to think and even on occasions to write

I am certain that I am sufficiently unaffected by religion for religion to affect me yet I am equally sure that I do not carry the bias of a zealot which might similarly taint what I would hope will be a balanced though still hopefully inspirational story

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Thoroughfare

I was driving home from my work it was mid-afternoon on a grey sky day in late May I was listening to Willie Nelson's fine album Spirit

I began to have great empathy with this singer-songwriters songs of failed and ended relationships also of relationships broken and restated

I felt a need to write some words myself so I turned off the main road down a country lane named Thoroughfare after about a mile or so I pulled onto the grass verge this was farming country fields and fields and yet more fields

I wrote of misunderstandings serious misunderstandings with  disinfected understatements I wrote from often mistaken memories I wrote of love of joy of deep ache and undoubtedly I wrote pulled back from the grip of pain

I wrote because I felt I needed to as though Willie Nelson's songs which I know you cared for had opened up my long closed heart

I worked up four verses with a deal of repetition a great deal of repetition based on the workings of yet more repetition before I moved on to reputation our reputation and our love

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Light

There is a place I think Leonhard Cohen sang about it
There is a place where the light gets in

The watch says that it is between 5:30 and 6:00AM I should still be sleeping I had closed all the doors I had drawn all the curtains I had turned off all the electrical illumination I had done all that I could to create a blackout

It's hard to say what first woke me I had been dreaming that I was a compère in a small club introducing a group of young musicians who had gone off into the bar next door while their mums and dads shuffled well late first through the iron gates and then on into the clubroom

The dream had lots going on including my microphone not working which maybe broke my sleep that and the pinhead of light entering through the keyhole that and the daylight which worked its way into and through the muslin and the cotton hung up at the windows

That and the light-stream which travelled from the Velux in the bathroom ceiling through the door opened due to a call of nature that and the light in my mind the light the light which always does in that place get in

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Pilgrimage

On this day on another day
To this place to another place
A desert of a distraction such that I might hide away
A reason or force for subtraction to end or to begin my stay
Purposeful strides to the inside space for looking out
I slide by the Henry Moore decide to keep that photograph
Laugh out loud how the long walk clouded your vision
How the decision to come on foot from your mothers
It was a thing your brothers found hard to believe
But believe me you were one of the first
Your thirst for expanding your horizons caused you to burst
Upon this space with your anger and your rage and your love

Yes above all love that final shove the push
Which pushed you out of your uncomfortable comfort zone
That desire to roam to leave your home of half a life
To leave your wife and your children willed to find
With unfulfilled haste that chase to expel the waste
Of simply trundling on your own pace now unrelenting
The obsession presenting itself at each and every turn
Yet yes yet yes yet what did you learn
Whose favours did you earn
How did you learn to churn to burn the past
Faster yes way faster than the last time
Faster than the words you learnt to mime

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