Millennials' Picnic

‘Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all you could be missing out on the joke of the century,’ Dame Edna Everage

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise;

you’ll catch the strains of Fall Out Boy midst the closely-knitted pines.

They planned their route on Google Maps, brought camembert and wine:

for that’s the way millennials have their picnic.

Twenty-something dilettantes

scribbling free verse lines of anguish in their moleskin books;

don’t enjoy being young and tortured, but we rock that look.

We exaggerate a tad,

think life’s never been this bad.

We’re just dreamers life’s abraded ‘til we’re cynical.

Now we’re choking on uncertainty and laughed at from above,

they all say we’re spoilt idealists like this world is not for us.

If you go down to the woods today, you’ll hardly believe your eyes;

see hipsters frown at phone screens ‘til they’ve got that filter right.

Why immerse yourself in nature if it doesn’t get you ‘likes’?

For that’s the way millennials have their picnic.

Echo chamber politics;

Corbyn is our new Messiah and we’ll follow him;

blocking Tory scum on Facebook and we’re loving it.

Yet I have this subtle hope

(it’s naïve, by God I know):

one day we’ll be in the driver’s seat and change it all.

Perhaps we’ll cling on to our passions and we’ll shout until things change,

screw the tone police and thought pieces that say we’re all insane.

So although we’re quite pretentious and in love with silly fads,

and we’re guilty of self-righteousness and glamourize being sad,

we can all be daft together; in shared folly find a home:

if you go down to the woods today, you’d better not go alone.

Photograph: Ms Hazza Haugvik

Pillow Talk

Heart is bristled bark

beside stark, unearthly chalk

of burnt-out embers.

Did you not enjoy the flames?

Dusky dance of campfire games.

Yes, summer scorched us

red raw, and stung by your touch

I shed skin like leaves.

Tongues congealed in sticky knots.

Skin aflame like sun-kissed rocks.

I remember this:

pillow talk shorn of substance

since that soft, spring dawn.

Oh, I would not be so sure.

We were. Dare you ask for more?

To a bouy

Displayed in ThornFest: Turning Tides.

I’ve been thinking I wanted to kiss you,

old friend,

and your laugh is the sand in my shoes.

It’s been too long for me to still miss you,

they said,

and spend salt on the paths that we choose.

Yet I still wish that I had been braver

back then,

when we really had nothing to lose,

except some subtle pride

and the call of the tide

was eternally prying us loose,

when I was like the lapping wave

of a trembling, two-tone tide

caught inbetween

the advance and retreat

with the moonlight on my side,

but you were not the cavern’s mouth

and I could not come inside.

Composed and pristine,

you were calm and complete

and repelled me every time.

And it might be then or never

now I’m rolling out to sea;

and we both might wait forever

until we can finally be;

but I’m giving my all

to a foreign shore

where you can never follow;

and they say it is easy

like giving in

to the cold dream of tomorrow.

Breakers will break us

and old bouys will save us

now that you are a Lenten dream;

and the children will make us

for the cold sea to take us

as we wait for the tide to come in.

Changes

The scratching cries of blustering birds.

The tickling breeze that gently heaves.

The branches sway to keep the time

Amidst the soft applause of leaves.

Now comes a dying nasal whine

And rasping clearing of the throat.

The cheap-chirp birds and whisper-leaves

Could not compete with billy goats.

And if I was to add my voice

To woodland multitudes,

I’d stay my tongue and think what noise

I’d splutter forth to contribute;

What buzzwords, bywords, hand-me-downs

Would suit the tenor of my theme;

Or if a loud and bestial shout

Could wake the forest from its dream.

The time has come for artifice

To shed the shadows of the past;

To build myself from ashen blocks

And find a new self fit to last.

So come, you changes, murder me,

I’ll turn and face the strange.

Revise and ruin all you see

Erase it all and set me free.

Palm Sunday

Sunday.

The trees swallowed me up

And cogitated me softly,

With the leaves falling down in a vertical march,

Like the weeping of trees, a procession of palms.

They were not gold

But pale and brown,

Though far away

They shone like stones.

So as you were sinless you cast them at me

To bloody my body with loss of belief.

Now nothing remains of the lies that I weaved,

But I don't want to see.

So I shed my skin with muffled cracks

A constant, gentle breaking

And shift this flaking, wasting corpse

In one painful act of waking.

Now turn your eyes away from me

For I don't want to see.

And take your tongue and bury it

My covered ears still bleed.

And take this light away from me

For I don't want to see.

For I don't want to see.

Consall

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the road that could almost be wind too.

And birds.

One a blunted pinprick,

The next a creaking door,

And then a whining nasal choke

Pleads that they chirp no more.

The stream chuckles quickly and softly

Censored by a sharp avian tut.

Across the stream, the light is green

Amidst the trees, at awkward angles

Aloofly offering leaves for gifts.

But not the vine: high-diving,

Hitting the absent water with even gestures of green.

Climb higher. A tree is felled:

Its fallen branches parallel.

Too straight somehow.

Another bows its mossy arm

To wish the ramblers well.

The ivied storybook oak

Looks perfect in the damp.

Its smooth and well-considered curves

Stand proud in a kingdom of dishevelled ferns.

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the rain that could almost be wind too.

Wetley Common

Canned chorus of barks

Rattle to a crescendo.

Behind the trees

The kennel echoes.

The howls subside.

A cockerel crows.

Static of tyres

On slipping stones.

The air exhales

A distant gushing breeze.

A hammer cries

In dull metallic shrieks.

The road beyond

Sighs a swelling, nasal groan.

Half formed words

Of children dance below.

In the relative calm

A cow clears its throat

Turns to the horizon

And boldly lows.

Little Victories

Come February Eden- show your face!

Come rebel summer- burn winter away!

The day is yours- shine on and make us proud!

Blow back the fog of the declining day.

Due West the bright balloon is flying low;

The avian chorus chirrups its dissent

That they should share their sky with dilettantes

Raised up, made godlike by Promethean vents.

Come five o’clock no resonance remains;

Persephone returns to her dread tomb,

With her I’ll languish in the misty gloom

And with one little lapse lose all my gains.

These little victories are all in vain

Since winter is still winter all the same.

Perhaps We Are

Perhaps we are

The ripples on

A stagnant pond

Underneath the algea;

Like veins within

Your oblique skin.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

The gaping fish

That gasping slip

And slide back in the water;

Try to taste air

Which is not theirs.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

Just amateurs

With metaphors

All a size too small;

Can’t comprehend

Our complex ends.

Perhaps we can't.

Snow

It fell so close that I was choking:

Claustrophobic,

Sodden through.

The flurry flustered. Non-committal

Orbitals

Surrounded you.

The grace on your face reminded me

Of the time we saw circumspect owls.

They all looked suspicious,

But you were oblivious,

Your eyes spoke uncensored delight.

Your alchemic joy: bright, infectious

Giddy, reckless,

Radiant.

And I was like the whitening marble

Heroic poses

Roman noses.

Though I was drunk vicariously

That impish laugh knew no reply.

That smile brings back the scarcity

Of crunching tread and dandruff sky.