Not much else to say.

Was right to stop then

Most recent exercise

Bracing confirmation

Problem is always acceptance

Damned both ways

Problem is a solution

Winner is all

It’s me. It always was.

And you

Could look at this as a racetrack

Circular

Or a binary issue

1 vs 0

Winner vs loser

I want to break out sideways

Make my own steeplechase,

Smash the barriers

Escape to the highlands

Where I might belong,

One millenium

But they turn those ones into glue,

Once they’ve run them down

Black Beauty had a good life,

After the abuse

It’s not like that

It’s just a matter of temperament, breeding, training,

And who you get sold to.

Dear Bursaria,

I’m sorry I killed so many of you today.

I started gently

Then he said

‘They regrow better when you slash them’

Just doing my job

I believe in you

I know how it feels

I know so little

Chipped you back to stumps

To get to the weeds

Woody, canopy-climbing, seeding multitudes

Even into your splendid thorny thickets they push themselves

Crowding out your blossoms and rattling fruits

Kerwon

I’m sorry

This is temporary

Has to be or how else can I live with this mulched destruction

Taste bitter zinc-sweat dripping from under visor

Blinding mid-morning sun

I apologise to each one

If I pause, listen carefully

I imagine I can hear you

Can feel your whispered, spiky presence in my mind

Perhaps not all lies

Your thorns are imbedded in me,

Engulfed by my skin

I see you everywhere

Can never forget your face

Even if you hate me

I wait to be sent back here,

Want to watch you rise up and dominate this light gap

All mornos I lie prone

Arms aching from my penance

Nothing like what you must feel

But I am you. Somehow

I feel it too.

Around my neck

Hooked in eyelids open before

Breathing down fire escapes into

Future tense

Melodramatic nonsense

Threads pull on my mouth, the valves

Of my veins,

We’re arguing again

Me and I

Somebody pulls another punchline out of

Thin air I’m never going to be breathing

This off-world non-existence

Snarling at rescue

Undressing from the tangle of

Past expense

Running my hands down

You in whatever body

Adorn us with

Suspense