Ian Kellett

Shall we all fall down and surrender,
As if we’ve been hurt?
Or rendered inert?
...

I’ve made a career
Out of hypochondria,
I’ve worried
And worse.
...

The couch on my back
That I cannot get off
Is not due to malaise
Or a cough,
...

In case I fall asleep tonight,
I’ll paint my eyelids blue,
Then if you wander by my site
You’ll see me watching you.
...

The folder’s clips left open
On the pages of the day,
Freeing hooves
Of shoes
...

Well the sun was not so hot when we decided
To switch off the radio and take a ride,
But we only got as far as the ice cream van
When we turned around and made for home again.
...

Staying scares,
and fear freezes me,
So I step upstairs,
but rising seizes me,
...

On the last day
Of the year,
Death, dressed
Up to the nines
...

And if intentions sent are purely meant
To be reciprocated, how then should
We proceed; in haste to demonstrate
Agreement, or gracefully in order to
...

We are well
In our cells
Which have more walls
Than four,
...

I was always born in June,
And on the seventeenth.
It was always afternoon,
And the fifth day of the week.
...

And the man I saw came closer,
With weight in his eyes and sloth in his step
And double in his back and bone in his head
And nakedness that fed the air with an air
...

There’s something afire;
The tale of a loved one,
A messenger’s fright.
A strong under wire;
...

You give up and could die,
An incurable,
But live and wonder why,
Uninsurable.
...

My emotional content has most surely been dulled,
By the repeated abuse of anyone’s alcohol;
It swells and produces more depth in my brain,
But my scale has lost timbre and my range its terrain.
...

I wouldn’t want to take my fingers for a walk in your hair,
Washed in apple juice,
With orange roots,
And wild life living there.
...

There below the level of the logs,
Where a proper little island ought to be,
Swam a lovely creature with a face,
Tenderly rejoicing in the sea.
...

We moved along the lines
That mirrored the opinions
Of the life and sundry times,
Until the furthermost thoughts
...

I’m not going back,
Not even when desperate loneliness speaks
I will not return,
If ever my absolute only-ness peaks
...

The chatter about,
The whispers of disparate tongues;
Offshore sounds of the morning
Inland after lunch.
...