Sheila Knowles

I find
oases in strange places
spot
the jewel inside each fool
...

If I could relocate
the imagination of my childhood,
lay it next to
the experimentation of my teens,
...

This morning when I woke
I choked
on the freshness of your breath
that serenity
...

You sit there in front of me
legs spread across the girth
of a double seat
arms folded against your chest
...

She was sitting at the bus stop
dressed in turn of the century black
waiting for the bus
that takes the leftovers
...

to tell you how much
I love the cup of coffee
you bring me every morning
and the way you warm my icy feet
...

She’s sitting
cross-legged on the floor
plucking the fluff
from a deep pile carpet
...

I was just flicking ash
on burnt out phrases
scraping jaded thoughts
in hardened wax
...

Words are nothing more
than dust upon the page
they drift and scatter
like my random thoughts of you
...

I loved going to the pictures
when I was a kid
that’s what we called it then
in the days before online tickets
...

There was a short man
sitting in front of me
on the train this morning
having an interview on his cell phone
...

I sat for a while
on the grassy verge of reason
dangling my thoughts
in water pools of sanity
...

My hands are rough
I can see the lines
and how they’ve changed their route
across my palms
...

How am I supposed to inspire the world
from an ageing office chair
or leave my mark for generations to ponder
while staring past the debris on my desk.
...

Someone placed a mountain
to the left of my new house
the clouds have swallowed the sky
over the garden to my right
...

you spread
your film of balm
numbing her flailing thoughts,
then fan inertia
...

I was walking
through the supermarket this morning
and this guy comes up
and asks me in German
...

I could have passed you by
could have ignored you
when you fished for my attention
I could have walked the other way
...

My pen collection is alive
each member a witness
to some specific moment
of sub-conscious kleptomania
...

I came across a man
whose placid smile
unnerved me
he spoke of love regained
...