Uncanny that in my transitory blog-turbining I have come across this current release Lease of Youth by coldwave/electronic artist Erskine Lynas – with this album cover:

I’m on this
most of every day –

emails, blogging,
social media,

fake and
real news,

where that next missile
will land,

the absurd words on
how to stop it all –

and I miss thirty odd
years ago:

queuing outside
for meat,

the butcher riding me
about teachers’ holidays,

queuing outside
for bread,

fresh smells sliding
along the long line,

bottled milk each day
at the front gate

and so seeing Bill – old
Luxton – at his shop

in town, tallying in a
note-book with a pencil,

adding up what’s owed
in real numbers.

A search
for her name

cannot find
the inflection,

even an otherwise
gift from god is not

acute enough for
the internet.

She is,
therefore,

a loanword
by appellation – so

special – but
I already knew that.

And what is in a designation?
Precisely.

This is the stuff
of looking for

something important to say,
when feeling

just doesn’t
seem enough.

I have been asked how
to spell her name

so many times.
Does it matter?

As often as it has
been requested,

and the accent will always
mean much to me,

I promise,
with a personal é.

Koi

Throw any
and everything

at it, the voice
in his head

says something
like this – but it

is more the
instinct of a

jerk by some
dumb animal,

not fish who
do consider and

learn [even the
bony-eared

assfish knows
this is wrong]

and a gunman
in Texas has

perhaps done
what he has

done on impulse –
no koi,

love and
affection,

in his knowing –
just a carping

on about hatred
to overfeed

it all in a
scattered falling.