Hey all,

I wrote half of this one in the shops, eating a discounted sandwich after I had dismantled my psyche with my psych for an hour, and before I did some Christmas shopping.

The other half I wrote just now.

I am not sure how I feel about free-verse poetry (or at least MY free-verse poetry), but I kind of like that this one’s a little more hopeful than most.

Enjoy!

measure by measure

I’m being unpeeled.
Bit by bit those sealed thoughts
yield to the pressure. I can
feel the threshold moving
a new dawn, and assuming
I can withstand that excruciating
feeling – the journey elucidating,
the path illuminating,
lit up measure by measure –
the change will be revealed.

But fortifications so wide
cannot be defeated
easily. And the
normalisation of frantic
realisations are repeated
continuously. And with an assiduous, insidious
deliberalisation of an unhinged
mind, I’ll find the kind of
change might leave me blind

to the world. So new thoughts are
hurled into the furnace. Burned
and churned up into ashes and
I can only hope that the bits that
survive will stay alive
alive for long enough that
one day I’ll be healed. And then I
can wield a new perspective,
turn on my heel,
and finally – finally –
take the wheel.