Setting, conflict, resolution

And it was true that Blair had not the faintest chance of succeeding but he was determined to give it a go anyhow. His mother had prepared him well for moments like this and so he was going to go for it, for all he was worth. It was at that exact moment of thought that Blair missed his footing on the tight rope and fell ground wards, no one will ever know the last thoughts that went through his mind, perhaps he wondered about the logic of nude tight-rope walking, perhaps he simply thought "bugger" but as this is a third person narrative, it will have to remain in the imagination of those who saw his pale body fall, floundering to the floor as his shadow expanded beneath him to land with a gut-wrenching crump. Yet even they have not been given thought as the narrative boundaries have been firmly established and so the reader, if there is one, will have to put the pieces together (of the final thought, not of Blair) but that's, I suppose, what Barthes meant when he claimed that the author, not Blair, is dead.

A line to chop one's head off

That's what they said - a line to sever your head
off
to chop to slice to decapitate - to lop
Writing should provoke the will to lose one's head
to spill one's marbles, to go over the top
A line to chop one's head off
to cease to think for yourself.

A British Concern - with bits of other poets

A certain slant of light;
Now that's a certain text,
With all rain to my right,
My sensations vexed.

BBC proudly states:
Sunny spells, 19 degrees.
The floods come trembling,
The wind knocks over the gate.

Southern farmers: scared'
No water to quench the thirst.
April: the cruelest month
Tempting us with new birth:

As the June comes meekly in
The wind howls and rains soak:
I would not shrug at snow in summer
Ice to remind us of somewhere else.

A short insomniac thought before sleep finally catches up

and what if you could never sleep,
the haunting years hovering at your feet?
and what if drink kept you awake to fear
the phantoms hollering deep?
how bid thy faustus self when all
are kept? how childish now the rant you swell?

You're five.

You lie asleep nursing a sore throat.
You've braved it all day and I read
News - a world of cruel things:
A man on the cover holding a dead leopard,
We've talked of tigers in the wild;
A grave discovered in a faraway land
But not the one we read in
Books before bed.
I teach you to be kind,
Even when others are not.
Meanwhile I shoot dark thoughts,
Glimmers of revenge.
I tell you to ignore the taunts
When I wish to throttle the tiny mouths
That utter them.
Your brother lies dreaming
And I know it's true
That one day all this will be yours.
Meanwhile I'll teach you to cope
With doubt, with rolling fears
With every growing of your tiny years.

And these things only

And these things only; the pearl white of winter,
a yellow leaf curls like the hand of the dead.
The not where it was of spring and the where it went.
Autumn promised fruit and fires, toasting -
Winds brought fierce wars and nothing the same.
And these things only with the flecks through
Ice remind us of the once and ever of snow.
Leaves: dead shadows.
Through white veils, faces scream
beneath savage walls, trees shiver;
bony hands against a bloodied sky
The skyline, broken-toothed, leaking disease.
And then the Spring, to wipe away everything?

And it was green

And it was green when we walked;
the grass stood tall where
now the shadows fall and come
together restlessly.
Now it is yellow, the crunch
of bones on my boot;
the skeleton of the past
lining the path with broken
fingers. You wore linen for the heat,
I was purple in pleasure
but could not see nor hear
the first leaf fall.
Snow, ice then all is slime.