And through the cold coat of
Winter wear, a greener bud
begins on branch that dares
to hope for warmth and better light.
Here, here and here
there lifts a brave blade of
grass, defies threats of frost
and skies overcast by monochrome bright
Sun shaded from sight.

Then tumbles flake into warm drip
of life and wakens and washes
the dust from daffodil eyes
who poke a cautious tip through
earthy blankets
first one there, then there, now
here and here and here and here.

And then a yellow strikes upon the
V of beating wings, and kisses
the sleeping bark awake on trees
who unwrap their groggy arms
and stretch towards the rays
with greening finger leaves
and catkins and stickybuds
and squirrels who agitate
and chatter
and bees who sing a welcome again
to tulips who rush to the surface
to greet them
and rabbits and foxes who chase
and soon we two join too like lost peoples
returned from long dark adventures, emerged,
to add to the business bustlings of
Spring.

Just a quick reminder to those who are unsure or, on
reading this believe I write from experience: my poetry
comes from imagined fiction – I make stuff up – I am
not planning on buying a motorbike or having fights with
my wife (although I am surely ripe for a mid-life crisis)

On a hotel room
An unsteady squint strains at these reeking walls,
Tar-stained from the puffing of road-warrior nightjars
Who drank deep on drams of their superior’s wishes
And tormented their second-best wives
With lies that they both sensed the taste of
On tongues which waggled a tarantella dance around
The sharp bull horns of cheating, his bright fighter’s
Cape of platitudes furling around him as her doubts, fears
Of betrayal stamped the ground and snorted a steamy
Spittle that shook the doors of their marriage.

Another night death-gripping the bedcovers with her
Suspicions. Another knocking his rocks against
Bell-ringing glass and sucking the brown burn
Of bitterness drowning as it washed resentment
From teeth electrified by edge against edge grinding.
He has no reserve of desire to drag
Doing The Right Thing along with him. There are
True selves to find in motorbike trips and
Many destinies thwarted by coming home on
Time and painting the bedroom walls white.

He claims, by example, better use for tomorrow can be made by
Hung-over vikings who arrive red-eyed amongst
The enslaved and clocked and desk-bound.
His warrior clothes strewn with a confetti of
A fixed agenda torn to shreds stuck on
With cock-sure machismo spirit. The gaunt evidence
Written for posterity across the deepening creases
Of his buffalo-tongue face betrays the wear and
Fraying as his identity and purpose bounce away from him
Into the tragic pile of Things He Could Have Done.

We all starin’ at the fender we followin’
lip bit focus from the fella who drives.
Davey ‘im a snooze and he sweatin’ up a storm
the others shift position like they on hot rocks.

Five guys packed in and all packin’,
colors on our backs, full-on inked and all that.
Five guys settin’ on a mission
teach a guy a lesson he’s really gonna get.
Five guys flexing up their muscles;
tonight: click-click bang-bang respect.

So we reach a shady corner
and see ‘im slouchin’ like a drunk.
Waistbands ripple as we pull our metal out
flashes of munitions and pop pop pop;
sloucher hits the deck and his baby-momma drops.
There’s a screamin’ and a wailing’ as we screech away fast
this lesson is a lesson that’s really gonna last.

We whoopin’ and a yellin’ coz we done our bit o biznizz,
9 mil teachers smokin’ up the car.
We’re slappin’ and fist bumpin’ and biggin’ up ourselves
whilst the driver stamps the pedal and he turn his knuckles white.

Five guys start the path to penitentiary
where the tats are tears in the corners of your eyes
but five guys only got one focus
coz five guys happy with their retribution night.

There are dark threads that weave across.
A stroke that arcs a path, a flick that
hints a stream, shadows pulled from where they
hid in amongst the streaks,
or a quiver caught on lonely cheeks,
a shattered glimpse of a man on the moon:
all a connection between my thoughts and you.

A silky paper that’s framed with jet,
flows of ink that dripped from an
unclenched mind into the right places.
It’s not where the pen touches – the art is
how you join the spaces.

So as you lean in and wrinkle your nose
at the title I chose or the price that gets
placed on a little bit of me; breathe in
and smell the scents of the translation; the flower
that unfurled inside a mind’s eye, expressed as
“Pen and ink by Nancy Lepo, $200″.

Mission after failed mission of overtightened shirt cloth incomparable to the air-brushing wizardry of a celebrity book of spells; calorie-counted celebrity inspiration, feeling the burn; “one more minute, don’t forget to stretch and warm down”.

A plastic-propped peep into a better life where everyone is shiny and the right machine can make you God’s own barista without even having to watch the accompanying DVD box set.

All on the never never. ’til the never becomes the now.

In a surge of nature versus big business our crude seas wash over us in an endless tide of promises and slicked birds who drown in the failures of our present way of life.

In the background; an urgent pitch to call now and pay nothing for twelve months. A lesson unlearned.

In the foreground; stands a poet working out the best way to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a dog whilst he waits for his toast to turn tan.

So this is what we’ve become.

Beaks shoved forward, scaly necks stretched,
with mouths gaping, snouts snapping with an echoing snip from
the effort of land crawling just to lay their eggs with
eye-scrunching strain in hopeful clutches.

We stood and marveled with our cameras,
all red eye flashes and whooping fingers,
whilst the tide dragged at the night-time shore
trying to peel away stragglers from the pack of
unwary voyeuristic foreigners.

The musical swish of the wind-rattled palm trees,
made the bobbing fishing boats dance, painted in the yellow
ochre of candle lanterns that perched
like watchmen on the bows where it brushed just
enough of their pilots to make them appear like ghosts
dipping into the blackness as they
flicked out their nets
or dragged wicker pots from the stern.

A world away from this evening; the toes that
joyed at the sucking of sand dampened by the
warm foam of a receding sea curl now into the
unfriendly nylon pile of evening news and TV dramas,
readying for sleep before the chill of
tomorrow’s commute and office politics of
the punch in punch out, don’t-be-late
warning-mornings and the school runs
amongst the young mums parking heedlessly.

Funny how we’re all just turtles on turtle beach.

I often pause to think of others.
Like the couple on Beak Street I saw leaning
in against the March wind, pinching
still-fitting 1970′s smeary gabardine
mackintoshes around them like over-stuffed
sausage casings.

He; gaunt and with that sunken on-the-way
from this life look, she; rotund and
waddling with cheap home perm flattened
under a clear plastic penny market rain
hood whilst her free hand drags a
shopping trolley between them both like
an unruly and unwilling square tartan-coated pet.

She chose to wear those opaque tan tights
and they are so cliche, aren’t they,
with her seen-better-days blue brogue comfortable shoes
which shuffle shuffle and scuff along
next to the groceries and the gray nearly-ghost.

He looks like a man who has resolved to
hang on a day longer if he can, for her
sake, or for someone’s sake if not hers.
I’m sure it’s not for his.

His gaping-mouthed breath, like it
must sound loud enough to startle although
the bus window and the rattle of empty seats
mask it from me, sucks his cheeks in and out
with the effort and I see his eyes scrunch
up unseen as he keeps up her pace which he taps
out with a walking stick, stomp, stomp,
stomp like he is grinding out cigarette butts
with every step.

To where and why do they walk so painfully
in this bouncing rain?  What are their
names?  Is this yesterday’s sour wine of
relationships I see through the dragon puff
of diesel exhaust or a glorious culmination?
Or perhaps mainly their reality, unpoetic and
unremarkable except to someone like me who
often pauses to think of others.

Liquid solid flows with the puff, ochre stripes washed
grey with the powdering of divinity. The lines of his thoughts
across his brow, deep and drifting, running over to wash the beckoning
fingers of smoke’s fate, launching to drift on torrid
currents of time and fickle happenings, thrown back and
forth further and far from the loud “haaaaa” of the exhale.

Their prose and statuary, towering in their microscopic
magnificance amongst the whisps of their fleeting existence
unseen by those who did not look for them, breathed in to
be a part of those who did not make them; even those who
did not pause to question or care if they were likely to exist.

If, at that moment He should clap his hands or
spin to attend to some other diversion they might
scatter in the draught. It’s a fact; you can’t unscatter
smoke.

I woke gently, but all of a sudden today to
the sound of a cartoon voice singing rhymes
in a fake Manhattan accent.

The dark is hollow, lit by the sound of my snoring
dog which bounced off just-familiar walls and
rapped against the ice on the windows. A
rumbling echo-locator beacon mapping the room.

The Omaha cold has a smell. An aroma that you
don’t get back in the nooks and crannies
of British suburbia. Over there the cold has an odour
of rotten wool or skanky grey cardboard. But here,
here it is… incisive. Like the edges of
a pattern cut into a good quality glass.
Etched. Purposeful. It tricks you like this.

And here the wind doesn’t nudge you about and
flick playful flakes at you; it pinches your ears and
slaps the raw open palm of its hand full and hard
against your sore cheeks and tweaks the end of
your nose to make it drip drip drip sniff.

Home-coming is the sound of ruddy-faced people
knocking the life back into gloved hands followed by
the communion of banging boots free of snow that
doesn’t melt. Watching are hurrying snow plows
littering dirty white drifts at every road junction;
sullen funeral pyres where Nebraska’s December
buries the bones of our long sweet lazy summer.

Up, with a cuddle for the roused snorer and a
pat on the head for Toto’s double before I stitch
myself into my great galumping snow boots and
ram my “ear hat” down hard to thwart frostbite’s
chances. Fingers straight and stiff in waterproof
gloves; required, essential – skin dies here in minutes
if you let the swirl of the wind start to snack on it. I kiss,
check, keys, check and head Oates-like to the car.

Half-light twilight and the crackle of trees flexing
nakedly in the chilling breeze that bites. The blipper
clunks the door locks and, with an OCD glance for the
right park light, full red dial, full blast fan on; both
heaters set to beat the ice away from the poor
shivering windows.

So I begin to scrape away winter from your windshield.
Methodically because that’s how my mind likes to do
these things, the way I’m designed. Square scrapes,
neat edges, top to bottom. The sound of the blade
bounces off the garages and walls. A rasping, juddering
staccato cackle of frozen resistance. No bird sounds,
no traffic noise; just me and the scraper and…
that…
damn…
stubborn…
frost, thicker than the glass I’m hacking it from.