Shake out and spill over. Drop your clothes to the floor. As nomads cross borders he writes past the margins of your paper thin skin Let him. With vermillion inked pen craft cradling strings as you kick out your foothold.
Photo by Adrien Converse on Unsplash
I should have walked to the Tate across sun blazed bridges. I should have sat cross legged with the Rothkos. In dim light cried small, breath-jagged tears. Dissolving my pigment into their burning edges. I know worlds precious as ruby, deeper than vermillion, more vivid than carmine. I want to let go of opacity. Spill out of my love-bruised body. I need to be colour prisming, physics snapping, purest abstract as I negate reality.
My friends stay in the shallows Their dog whines at the shore. She isn't sure why I'm a lake creature now Lose my land-legs to go deeper. Pirouette in the water. One arm After another. I rain-dance the rhythm Of leaf-drop, darkness, and fall. I'm a thousand years old. I was born in this mud Murk-inches lie ancient, below me. Where leeches lie waiting, where eggs begin hatching I'm dying and living, again and again. Legs heavy and awkward at the dock ladder Dripping onto manhandled wood. These blue skies won't last much longer. I take the hand of my lover Heart as deep as the lake Bounded by seasons changing forever.
Photo by me, taken at Grace Lake
Heart caged in ribs Raw valves and chambers Bones sigh like twigs I burn like embers.
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
In meditation upon you I lost myself. My toes curled into themselves and I fell inwards. Filling with storm floods. Naked in dark water. Swimming with gills. I breathe your air between wet lips. I am paper thin pale, you colour me red as I break my ribs to go deeper. Entwined, we become both more and less. Electrons energise, orbiting, exchanging. We are pure reaction, molecules of sex, coded so complex I became intangible. Indelible. The marks we lay upon each other. The vivid dreams of life together. We held hands tight trying not to tremble. Creaking loudens as water swells. Swallow screams as we submerge. In black water our bedsheets become jellyfish wrapping stinging strings around my neck. Your eyes empty and you slip away as silver bubbles steal my breath.
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash
Pixels buzz on dusty screens Motors whirring in gestation I built all of these machines Calculating wrong equations. In light it fell through tin roof rust One raindrop sparks the crashing system Night falls painting metal frost Captures the corroding kingdom. Then snaking vines constrict cables tight. Weak walls collapse. And bursting in Sunlight blisters unkeyed plastic. Mold empathic eats synthetic skins. Leaves blanket, dew coats nettles bold with burning stings. My empire was dead but it grew. In the passage of years I may discover In deep soil, a decayed resistor And think back to when it was new.
TL;DR Previously on this blog I posted only writing relating to what I do for work – learning & development, technology, management, and customer experience related blogs and the like. I’m now going to post all of my writing – poetry, movie reviews, random thoughts, whatever.
Continue reading →I love technology. I work in tech and I am a big consumer of tech in its various forms. But I’m not blind about the shortcomings of a lot of technology, and part of what I find fun about using new technology is comparing how it actually performs with the marketing bluster about it.
Yesterday I went to a hotpot restaurant which had a robot waiter. Not so much the sleek, cool and futuristic robot that you might have imagined if you were asked a decade ago what the robots of today would look like. This robot had a cat face, played muzak-style elevator tunes, and needed rescuing when it got stuck on the edge of a wall. It was cute and novel, but only capable of bringing out dishes and returning to the kitchen. I’m sure if the human cooks and wait staff there were asked if it made any significant impact on their workload, the answer would be a no.
Continue reading →A few months back, I got offered an opportunity to create a new suite of training courses for an organization I like a lot. I would have owned the entire process, from planning to evaluation, and I would have had content producers to help me realise my ideas. These courses would have been my baby, and I would have had complete creative control over them.
Five years ago, a project like this would have been a dream.
But I turned that opportunity down. Why?
Continue reading →I am extremely happy to have attended my official graduation ceremony from UCL for my MA Professional Education and Training.
Thanks to UCL Institute of Education for putting on a wonderful virtual graduation ceremony to round off a fantastic Masters degree experience!
Attending at 3am over Zoom in my pajamas with a DIY mortar board made out of duct tape by my wonderful partner isn’t quite the way I imagined it would go when I started this degree, but it was a very heartfelt and memorable ceremony that I will remember fondly for always.
Continue reading →
