Tessera

Ju (Julian)

@hool415.bsky.social

Poetry stuff only. Nominated for a Forward Prize, Best Of The Net (Twice) and Two Pushcart Awards. Black Bough (Silver Branch Poet), East Ridge Review (Featured Poet), Joint 1st BB New Simile Competition.

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Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · yesterday

Hullo #poetry #scotland #dundee I love every corner of this land!

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Dundee In Early August

Dundee:
where winter is reinforced
by concrete;
slate-grey sea adding to a pummelled rock
topography;
a fancy museum
from swept up roof tiles;
where bridges
feel more electric fence.
This place scorns the flimsiness
of unstructured
merely gallivanting
sun.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · last wk.

Hullo #vss365 and to #coast. Wasn’t expecting to be able to take part today but here’s a fairly recent write…

Lone Gull Above A Boat, English Channel

A milk-sop, atop this churn of grey,
where wing-tips arch and flex
like a battered car-boot-sale paperback;
air,
not the grizreek overcoat for city blocks
but pure: transcendent.

The bird drops
to play the broken glockenspiel
of our wake;
the diesel engine’s unthought-lugs suddenly
ponderous,
flat-footed.

We’ve been too long:
an approaching pier,
the coast’s accusatory forefinger.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · last wk.

Hullo #vss365 and to #summit An old one today.

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Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · last wk.

Hullo #poetry #oldage

Not Enough Upset

There are a few more worthy souls
in old people homes,
who could make the case
for swapping with me;
caged by a befuddlement
or just the institution,
odd ones,
still deserving to be freed,
otherwise, such a beaten acceptance
of their remaining Time
being thinly stretched out
by unknown hands,
like those sparse bands of tired bunting,
tying them weakly
to some childishly-defined concurrent event;
always, always,
the same faded pennants
pinning them to dates that don’t
in truth
ever matter:
any life: lower than ersatz,
and if they could dare
or manage to think about it,
most holding no good reason
to shuffle painfully,
with brusque help,
daily,
from their allotted dying beds.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo @tomsnarsky.bsky.social thank you for #smallpoemsunday #poetry

Devouring Gower

We stopped on cliffs when coming back
eye to eye with the dusk,
staring at a taffeta bay,
the sky
all garish orange-gathers;
squatting tiny
centred on the razored horizon,
a spidery yacht:
the concussed light having turned by contrast
into odd-shaped shadow;
waves had been industrially
corrugated,
and one wet-suited windsurfer
flew out over the swell:
perilous mono-winged insect,
just above
unforgiving cords of web,
edging ever closer
towards the day’s
final yell.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

How Strange The Darkness Works

Dreamt of a girl
from school,
I must have only ever spoken to twice,
and even then,
just by shyly shouting
at an awful disco,
which as always,
I was dragooned to go to.
Pretty girl,
joined our year late,
had moved to the capital
from the sticks,
she had to lean right into my ear
to speak,
remembering her yelling breathy-warmth
down one cheek,
but not hearing the words,
just the sing-song musicality
of her speech.

The dream had researched well,
dressing her in that flecked winter-sky,
mini skirt;
and returning
her mesmerising electric hair,
as if she’d brushed
far too close
with a Van de Graaff generator.

And thinking about it, shockingly,
she must once again
be my age now.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #poetry #schoolholidays

Late July

Saw a child,
five or six
from my car:
first morning of the school holidays.
He was running round and round a tree,
repeatedly,
all the time
till my lights turned green,
so evidently happy,
he could have been
a dog,
freshly unleaded;
emotions only coloured in
with big fat crayons
at that age.

Not sure whether
any adult-pictured
nuance,
even if allowing
for much finer detail,
could ever be
an improvement.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #shift

Shift

You can shift
and use an
I love you
a thousand different ways;
to help unlock a fretting libido;
to underline and finalise
an apology
in a relationship,
when unambiguously
being wrong;
but has most power
when sneaking up on self,
in those quiet moments together,
and always
without
any superfluous fanfare.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #road

Road

Walking home
it’s late,
streetlamps gild with a coppered light.
I’m on the other side
when you pass me by,
unnoticed.

You two are your own parade,
all mingled arms
and tumbling laughs
pursued
by a pair of lolloping balloons.

We are fifteen,
friends,
-why I didn’t speak?
Barefoot uninhibited zest
facing my clomping
shod of shyness.

Now
I only hear dead tongues
and the road between us,
a cleaving tarmac Styx,
as cancer will attack you both:
your clinging walk,
just a prescient awful pact.

I cannot warn of your deaths
for the past allows no bridge,
just the small hour
stumps of jetty,
to step again
a little closer,
to those who once had lived.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #poetry #spooky

Thinness

Everything feels precarious;
the usual hoard of evening birds
aren’t flying
but without caring,
just swept;
that smoke-tinged breeze
is evidence of a dusk gone too far
and peeling;
tonight’s half-moon:
sky’s poorly fastened
sole remaining
button;

an owl and a car alarm
sing out
in the unison
of the jolted.

Later,
familiar ghosts
will be efficiently delivered
to any quaking
postcode.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #poetry #aging

Uncharted Age

Still not old,
but close enough to see its shore,
to unpick the thicket
of figures
rushing out to meet me on their sands.
Not ready spears,
but brandished walking sticks;
shouting,
due to weathered or failed senses;
many using faraway languages
of addled minds:
that cruelest inverse
glossolalia.

There are still stabbing reefs a-plenty
before any actual certainty
I will make land.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Once, On Honeymoon

We drove for lunch,
when two cars
by Boots The Chemist,
simultaneously
decided to reverse.
Nothing that wasn’t metal was badly hurt,
the pair got out and resumed as proxies
the loud argument
their vehicles started.
Honestly,
my wife was briefly horrified,
but it felt to me more a reminding,
a light-seasoning of real life,
still out there,
biding idly,
beyond our wilful two-week
look away.
So, I’m glad I saw it,
just a little seaside salt
sprinkled over
our spread of days.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #balance #poetry

Balance

Some theologies
insist
on a modest surfeit of goodness
to justify eternal life;
in all of sieved time,
maybe a clutch of souls
perfectly balanced,
oscillating like a condemned Janus,
equally stuck
between soft angelic harps
and spikier music
from the Devil’s
many playful prongs.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 2w ago

Tapering July

Yesterday,
we went to the stream,
parts pumping surprising colour
from a still startling
pre-loved sky,
but so stringy
and incongruous
within the haze of trees,
like their one troublesome
varicose vein;
fuss and flaps from a single
consulting duck,
who alas,
clearly didn’t know
quite how to operate.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #sprint #poetry

Sprint

Sprint is all-out effort:
the world turned
to mere background carousel,
it’s unsustainable,
but I’d still rather be
an impulsive flash of hare
than pondering
even if ultimately victorious
tortoise;
I’ll judge my own race,
thank you very much.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo @tomsnarsky.bsky.social Once again thank you for #smallpoemsunday #poetry

Reheated

Today it’s college-hot again:
remembering vividly
my room’s afternoon-pulled
amber-leaking
sun-battered curtains
and that unexpected visit once,
which surprised us both (though in different ways);
later,
a gravel scrunch
to the sweating wood of the library,
floorboards reliably protesting
like an ancient ocean-bothered cabin,

without thoughts of a before
or an after,
no sense in fact
of Time having any waving hands;
faces so young,
to be effectively blank:
everywhere, out of sight,
people filling up as hive-tied bees
but on forays
for their own particular pursuit
of the buzz of knowledge.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #poetry #saturdaysplat

Our Street

This street’s original feet
are now of course
in the ground,
our particular stretch being I believe,
an Edwardian invention;
even those first voices pushed in robust,
over-engineered prams
have grown
to dust;
though most of the windows are modern
secondary double-glazed,
I can still feel
respectable ghosts,
stepped back
just in the lee of shadowy curtains;
a wonder too if any original
front garden shrubs
survive:
those tireless batons of seeds,
passed on,
season through season,
like seen but forever unheard
generations of always short-lived
children.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #headwind #poetry

Headwind

A way to recognise
the very clearest
thwarting
headwind source
is found
by any close-up examination
of a mirror.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #poetry #birds #clouds

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Clouds

Some clouds pull you through,
towards the edge of space:
small soapy residue
on our otherwise clean
cockpit glass;
others,
loiter as victors
from their low
(and somehow missed)
sneaky pillow-swipes.
All rely on the learnt languages
of the rain
or just listen avidly
to the forever explaining
birds.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #conquer #poetry

Conquer

They say love conquers all,
but this requires
both split apple halves
to be reunited;
if not,
it’s only the preserved and pickled
jar
of a long lasting
but bitter tasting,
unrequited.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #poetry This put up for #toptweettuesday for a #wind poem.

Pressure Valves

All gales originate
from the Westbury Whitehorse Carpark,
pushing you so far off-kilter,
it’s walking,
but with a mangled
and transparent zimmer.

Stayed in a hotel
where 2 a.m. winds
ran pell-mell down corridors,
rudely sticking tongues
under gawping doorframes.

Nothing handles breeze
better than a hairy-willow:
a verdant fringe luxuriating;
cosplaying quietly,
acting as current-stroked
antipodean coral.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #patient #poetry

Patient

It’s a virtue of sorts,
but also
a slow puncture of agency,
a passive roadside wait.
Sometimes you need to put on
the blue sirens
and break the speed limits
for fate.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #unabashed #poetry

Unabashed

Worked with someone who was unabashed,
uncompromising
and spoke in a filterless brazen;
less fun for us,
the not in management,
needing to marshal all our dialects
of diplomacy:
we the people, who nine to five
lived and breathed
as bashed.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hullo #poetry Sorry this is late @tomsnarsky.bsky.social for #smallpoemsunday

Bugged

A dead fly on the sill.
I missed its dying, all the relentless
cries of wings.
You forget how they must carry
their own glass on their back;
just a brittle lightweight curl now,
a planed shaving
from a bigger, fiercer creature.
I will tissue it up
and we will share
a hollow
final crunch.
Some insects are destined
to always bother you,
a childhood cranefly my father caught:
splayed inside a book,
perfectly spread-eagled
like an awful 1970s
centrefold.

Julian Cason
(First in The Alchemy Spoon)

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #magnetism #poetry

Magnetism

Some birds use the earth’s magnetism
to navigate
great distances,
we don’t seem as able
to float above
and learn these things;
yet for all this achievement,
most of the chitter we hear from birds,
like us,
is a sharing of their panicked search
for a tightly-nested
love.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hullo #poetry (sorry, again!)

Night Shift

Someone from work
barged in the other night,
unsurprisingly,
it seems the hierarchy of life
is maintained in dreams;
made me wonder
if anyone
ever progressed a second career
just as a doppelgänger of themselves,
gaining promotion
by stretched small-hour stints
in a no less challenging
but so much darker
parallel world?

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #embrace #poetry

Embrace

Maybe there’s a downside
of getting close:
a stifling
or blinding
to the fully-shaped
and our needed stepped-back detail;
imagine if the Moon could
embrace the Earth:
its craters and rilles
scraped-out by the nosey peaks of the Himalayas,
we’d be flooded with shadow,
so night would be drowned,
seeing much more of a face
but in truth
far, far less.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hullo #vss365 and to #rose #poetry

Rose

These are supposedly more enlightened times,
so I think it unlikely
that anyone
ever
rose from the dead.
Faith is the absence of critical thought;
prayer a one-way
yet understandably desperate call;
religion:
an imperfect lens
for viewing
the universe’s majestic awe.

Without the divine,
I can still wish upon a star,
feel the cosmic winds
of worlds undiscovered
from afar,
and equally, just like the godly,
desperately
not want to die.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hullo @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social and thanks to @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social for this civic service. #fragmentsfriday #poetry

Approaching Heath Hospital, Late Afternoon, December 19th

A sick,
nearly-spent advent calendar;
each window: sallow glass,
holding
glib,
half-schooled germs.

Curtains hang
like open dressing-gowns.

Julian Cason

Ju (Julian)@hool415.bsky.social · 4w ago

Delicatessen

The Deli,
the penultimate time
I was propositioned.
Spend the day on my boat,
Saturday,
she said.
It will just be us,
a hand
anchoring my arm.

She was fifty,
I half that.
When I paused she laughed,
offering lunch as well.
That laugh,
spat-out, hard-edged,
showing she had invested
nothing of herself
in me.

The last time
was work,
someone’s house,
she just emerging:
three quarters still bereaved.

On my final visit
she met me braless
beneath her thin crisply-ironed blouse.
She asked for a hug.
A hug, she said,
slowing down the word
so it could safely steer
the approaching
junction.

I left on both occasions
gradually,
the invitations supposedly unnoticed by me,
each time wondering
why I said no to everything
instinctively,
quite so much.

Julian Cason