Silence the alarms.
Turn down normality and 
cease to persist.
Take life down to half time 
and sip the wine slowly.
I want to taste simplicity.
I imagine it's sweet,
like strawberry jam or
tea with two sugars,
but I've never been able to check.

Let's turn off the cars.
Bash the batteries out the remotes
and dismantle the tracks.
Let the box gather dust for a while.
Not pressing pause, per se,
just changing discs for a bit.

Isn't it wonderful how 
the volume of life so effectively 
drowns out the volume of thoughts?
And when you turn one down
the other begins to enunciate. 
Let it. 
For too long have we let 
TV, traffic and loud voices distract 
from feeling, 
thinking, 
healing. 

This is a time for 
bad and good.
No hiding. Just truth
laid out on a silver platter, 
ready to be tentatively chewed
and then gobbled up in one. 

Silence the alarms.
It turns out that 
simplicity and truth 
taste remarkably similar.
Like cappuccino:
Bitter.
Delightful. 

Thoughts.

In a time like now, I am one of those people with the attitude that we should always try to draw the positive to the surface. I am not willing to list the number of negatives that surround everyone on a daily basis, as I do not believe that is what people want when they turn to art (especially now). Art brings realities to the forefront of our minds, yes. But it also distracts from those which are clouding our judgement too.

The times I have been outside over the last few days have been serene. If the houses drew their curtains and we swapped blue sky for a black one, I would genuinely believe it is night. And to me, that is kind of beautiful. Ignoring the dystopian fear that fills us whenever a letter is pushed through our letterbox because IT COULD BE ON THE PAPER and, just for a moment, the lives sacrificed to nature’s revolt (before going back to profusely thanking them for the other 1439 minutes of our days), there is some loveliness to be found.

When I first started writing the poem, I couldn’t get W H Auden’s poem ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ out of my head. The sentiment was similar in some ways; I do see this as time standing still in a sense, but not because I have lost someone (there are many people Auden’s poem would apply to right now, and all I can say to those people is, I am so tremendously sorry). I see this as dialling back. I see it as holding onto a distraught loved one and rocking them back and forth until their breathing slows and their eyes get tired. We are changing the pace of the earth, while we place universal energies into saving and preserving lives.

Something being bittersweet doesn’t make it any less bitter, or any less sweet. It just means that we are offered a choice, and I know what I choose.

Stay safe x