Catastrophising

They catastrophise the beginning of the week

the ends and beginnings of days

News bulletins telling us all about murders in bad areas by bad people that we don’t know

They’re out there somewhere

And they don’t look like us

They’re odd strange slightly deranged

They’re like those ones that commit

Terroristic acts in overseas territories

Separated by so many degrees

Nothing to do with us

The sadistic pleasure of imagining that all that we hold is civilization

in our homes and libraries and get rid of all who don’t fit and who do peculiar things in public

As we do up buttons and zips and tut into our morning tea

And repeat it to co-workers holding too tightly onto mugs

Because we know we’re safe but deep down it could be us

Scrubbing peculiarities out of our vocabulary and brushing dust off forgotten parts

And sewing the beautiful patchwork of our lives

the fragments we remember in moments of forgetting ourselves

into Instagram; smiles; hearts and filtering flourishing undulating

ourselves into beauty we could see at certain times and say that was mine

when we can’t see the beauty of the sky

through the screen but it’s always there for us to share

better to show the world what you can appreciate -

Because if we think all about the sad things that they tell us on the bulletins

Then we know there is no love and trust left

We reach out into vistas and visions

They are the next port of call

We can harbour our hate in a place that is so small it can’t be seen

Beneath the reds and blues and greens

Hoping to find a hand warm and ready to take ours

That Likes our way of seeing and how we curate it through the lens

Voyeuristically fetishising our dreams and loved ones and friends

If the news tells us we cannot trust each other

It must be true

So it’s easier to love you through the blue in the sky reflecting off my eye

The camera lies

It’s the blue of an eye of a baby being held on an escalator before it knows what it even means

A man told me it doesn’t mean anything

And I nodded to agree

In the moment it’s so easy when you’re broken down and weak

To think that love is something we wouldn’t need

In a serious situation

Rationality and knowing is perhaps our only vocation

We can see as far as the colours end

We can only believe what they tell us

Until we break through and hear the music beneath

And hear the silence beneath.