[neutral]

I remember when nothing was mine but the subject of rhyme. Sometimes try not to do it but I’m pliant, influenced by the finest of music for which my mind’s a conduit – aver that every verse is an anthem. Scansion reduces poetry to a decimal form yet forgetting the letters that crawl into your decibel hall - I meant ear, if you wondered. Really forced way to say so, probably ought to have said no but the prosody’s seductive as reductive synecdoche: I’m essentially a pencil, put pensively. Pretentiously, his pen and moleskin pad pulled out of his oilskin satchel and he pestered me. Low-key, I throw him a sentence with some semblance of acceptance. Boasted he’s published – showed me the entry. Asked for my judgment (he sucked). Told him I loved it (I’m not published). Told me his bag was waterproof as the tender poured vermouth into his Manhattan. Only cocktail I drink’s an Old-Fashioned with a lemon rind laid on the side. It wasn’t even raining outside. Bitch. I don’t know half the time why I seem so pensive -- I see no merit in being esoteric, switch cryptic to simplistic and a keyhole beckons deep in the ego’s presence/on the other side a clock’s ticking. The unlocking click makes the keynote pleasant. Together we walk. You insist it’s better we talk but I measure the pause between your sentence and thought, or cleverest clause and learn more about your element. More. I make less of you from the vowelled speeches - a silent taste of sour sonic secrets. Bowered beeches tower over disempowered peoples among ironic flowers, fleeting, meeting a mild and tempting breeze: both are swept with ease. Maybe I’m caught up in the English weather; I wait every year to watch snow drift to extinguish embers. The sediment’s settlers nestling at the bottom of a glass bottle that claps hollow when empty. Peremptory requests aren’t that – they’re behests. I can’t accept none. My pops just said: “Dumb – too clever for your own good, think of what you and your bro could have done”. He doesn’t see the growth stood before him. Used to adore him; warranted to floor him – but I don’t. That’s strength. Grown up and now we’re mature – impure, in thrall to our thoughts? Let lightning come, electric, violent snakes forking to make the primal rage of Nature tidal wave our natures. Remind us of your magnificent ambivalence. Remind us we ain’t shit. We are shit – refuse, refusing to acknowledge the price we pay as we sign away snips of our soul on the daily living between the paycheque that pays rent, or dividends. Death implies life, but it’s different if all the hours you're living amounts to cowardly minutes you play dead.