I came to writing through therapy at age forty-eight, and, nearly ten years later, I still need it. Writing I mean. We find things in life, that are not so bad sometimes and in that discovery, we find ourselves a little, and another jigsaw piece is slotted home. Writing has also proved to me, that its the pieces that are lost that complete the picture of who we really are. There is a little bit of me in everything I write, not blood, not flesh maybe, but the bit that accepts that just because a piece of sky is missing, it doesn’t mean the rest will collapse around me.

I Will Not Write About Today Today

I will not write about today today
it is too harrowing too narrowing
must have a world view
new epitaphs hurled anew
for our dead words only shame us
we need words already said by those who are dead famous
we need a book of better people's quotes 
local and provincial global anecdotes
www.clickable
less noble when applicable
clear screens on your phone
because it means clarity begins at home..
we kings now and cabbages
we are the savages now, we are the internet of things now
awoken and broken to dead words we only think are spoken
we are empty vessels now 
we are vacuum screaming in the panic room
we are zoom now
celebrity squares crossed out and swiped out 
we surf the waves until the z list is wiped out
we are fading red mist that is hyped out,
we need a breather we need a safe space to accept our last straw is shorter,
we don't need a sugar rush just a crash now
but we lie in naked prostration before the sacred cash cow,
wasting resources wasting water
pulling punches while others push
not my fight we say
unless its special courses
suck it up then
before we fuck it up then
too late too late 
we are the magic men
just tricks up our sleeves
all of us are sleight of hand all of us are thieves
our top hats are rabbitless our cabinets are hollow
we are plain and in the open  we are unhidden
we are each mouthful of false hope that we willingly  swallow,
because our high horses are the high horses we've already ridden,
do something then
our heroes were murderers and slave traders
now the worst of us
ungrateful we are 
for how they've made us
so do something then
our heroes are now rapists and paedophiles
we burn their statues as enemies
dance round their straw effigies like new and improved gods
like Nero's
like the moral majority so the gods wont forsake us
yeah, that, that, do something like that do something then,
our lawmakers are lawbreakers
our Lukes our Darth Vaders
the sticks up our arses our safe space light sabres
throwing bricks is for cavemen and brave brand new new agers
Do something then...do something then
do not march do not recycle
weave the fairy tales or believe the bible
put self help books on your shelves
while altruism is another word for feeling good about our selves
be a samaritan be an organ donor be a  care giver
you can cry wolf more than I can  just don't cry me a river
Do something then, do nothing then
don't stop filling your half empty glass,
because people with their own glass never say when
hard questions hard pass
don't like the answer then the answers don't ask
don't grow your own vegetables in your vegetable garden
don't know your own troubles until the e numbers double and your arteries harden,
rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb fresh and dirty without the supermarket aisles,
where fruit looks fantastic in its plastic bag of jet lag as its travelled fifty thousand miles..to sit on the shelf
don't feed the world just feed yourself
do something then do something then
don't sign petitions
sell your winter clothes as you are warmed by statisticians
global warming is just a local warming
ooh next door have put away the deck chairs
saving the sun for all those polar bears,
isn't that thoughtful isn't that kind
that's man kind
that's survival of the fittest redefined
follow the genes 
swallow your greens
as you sell your sacred cows for a cheap tin of beans
follow your receipts
your household hints
your bank rolled cheats
follow the plastic its where you parked it 
its floating around choking the Arctic
follow your oceans of emotions
your melting hearts as you're belting out your devotions
follow the lyrics of the naysayers and cynics
follow tax havens and tax payers
no one wins when the money spent
is only money that the rich people lent..
follow the paper trail
follow your nose
do not pass go but go straight to jail
can't trust the law now
can't trust the criminals any more now
not now they all wear the same clothes
can't trust your eyes now can't trust your eyes
follow your nose  now as it smells out the bile
of the rotten politician with the million watt smile
as grandma dies
as children starve
from greed and lies,  from the cold and the flies ,then do something
then do nothing then ,then do something then
dont pull statues down
they never hurt us
that not news you clown
its three ring circus time
where will the pigeons shit 
where will the drunks climb
don't rename buildings don't let the facades crack
don't ask for reappraisal or for knighthoods back
different times
indifferent crimes when that was just how it was back then
decades ago..so can we all calm down and count to ten,
we can all agree on history...
we can all put on our big boy boots
I am just as capable of stomping on graves if I think it suits..
but I'm like you 
I am you so
sit in your recliner and moan
your discomfort is designer
your sense of outrage a kidney stone
that will soon pass
because you have a half full glass
just enough to wet lips and see you through
I'm all right Jack, how about you
do something then
you do something then
do something
anything
don't fly a flag don't hold your banners
don't lose your rag but uphold good manners
don't hold your heads lower hold them higher
like dad taught you, like granddad perhaps
like the deaf and dumb who had pink maps of empire
and held their knives and forks like spanners
everything can be mended 
barricaded and defended
and so its no good being I, if I is one
and one is you and one is we 
because we don't do something 
we don't do something
we don't do anything
because some of us haven't time to write about today,
some of us are too busy
doing nothing.