bearing the stamp of conclusion

we hung back from dismantling promises, extensive and loose fitting as we imagined them, our share in this upstart was wholesome, irresistible,

through gained ground we downed our thoughtlessness and split hairs till dusk

sleeping end to end with echoes, asking for cheap tricks to linger and disturb our aspirations when the last depths stole our beginning, something we hadn’t accounted for – no explanation just an atmosphere of pre-existent story

continually dragging this resting place behind us involved more than our hidden collaboration allowed

we happened to hold ground in that moment and lay another fluttering, feral movement on the line

too late for the same story over again

choking on decades, how can the living, in the ordinary sense of the word, remain unstirred?

such a heavy load lifts fingers – to the forehead of all faces

from behind the foolscap, elaborating prized notions of full stop parallels and topsy-turvy diagrams, it was all a little too much for the laced up lexicon,

(around this time you delivered some ultimatums - wasn’t it usual to say either/or?

call it being realistic, as you did, but occasions don’t always celebrate this belief in repetition

everything swung from limits, take it from me it was long, long ago that priorities set themselves against the backdrop of lives

it’s troubling, I know, to step aside time and time again, with no pre-conceived idea of who commemorates all this)

a profuse unfolding did not challenge this letting off the hook

the half-light that stops at nothing is ineffective at sensitising the long suffering to be at ease with elbow room

from a smattering of first thoughts, so much irrelevancy just realised, all peripheral to the model (that shining example) so easily unidentified

with an unflinching aptitude for whimsy, embracing the remedy for a to z, we can overstretch the essentials, leaving out spare steps, making splash redundant

what is foremost in the mind is emphasis, hard on the heels of triviality,

to have a roof over this minefield is as much as can be expected, your safekeeping half-cocked, some crude manoeuvre implemented, overused

we lent out nightcaps on the off chance

and what of the vertical? that dinosaur of early-risers

every now and then successive everymen refine a one-off

and our grins were out of this world, full of unbroken psychological handshakes and aloof backers, good company kept alive