Sunday, 21 October 2012 Can words of love secure the scattering form, when all one's memories have peeled away from warmth? When all one's living's lived in feeding scorn, how can one repeal such acts against one's health? A mother's words are words of wealth, and a mother's love speaks for itself. But a father's words sit 'top the highest shelf, and glean shows through the dust only in anger, when you spurn it. Misery loves company, though it doesn't deserve it. Joy deserves an audience, although it rarely earns it. Misery's a fossil: you must unearth it from memory's burial ground, where the haunted past stirs. Therapy's a good thing, just be firm. Actions speak just as loudly as words. The stories we tell should be the ones we deserve as we pick through the scattered facts of our lives. For all in all we must survive, forgetting the when the where and the why. All that matters is grace, as it yolks the now. We must carry our truth through the rest of our lives. Thursday, 13 September 2012 - for Simon Armitage Note: wrote this a couple of months ago but have only published it now (October 20th) for some reason! Take a book of matches and single out one single shard, one matchstick. Take the words you'd said, written in blood, take the parchment and give it the flame: it wants the flame; it needs it. Good - take the fire and feed it. Feed it