Briony Nicholls

I am healthy but am dying
That much we do know,
Through layers of medical pages and
The gloomy glances of doctors -
...

A great white misty fog
Engulfed us on Christmas Day
As I went on my annual ‘walk-about'
On the great holy day of escape
...

The sun sets with loving certainty
The evening cold, that signals the ensuring frost, quietly descends
Finding its way into my sinews and bones,
Quietly attacking their soft plush centres.
...

Saw a psychologist today for the first time
But the cold damp weather dampened the room
Of heart-to-heart discussions. My voice permeated
Its air of uneasy silences and stale shadows that
...

There once was a holy hermit, who
Serenely victorious,
Emerges from his wilderness, and declares:
...

The tizzy glory of spring-youth
Has long since started to quietly wane
A muddied snow-ball, ominous greying edges
Like piranhas, have started their heinous march
...

When all is said and done,
In the full bright-glare of certain sun,
Then comes the slow murky descent of uncertain night.
...

How can I not love you?
You, who draws out from me,
A trove of hidden impurities
...

There is nothing else right now,
Except you and me.

Stroking your cheek, your little face strains
...

Stasis. Darkness. Black blood flow.
Skies sheeted and overcast with the
Gloom of paralysed inertia.
The pale pallor of my face casts its own long dark shadows
...

What a welcome visitor was she!
A heathen creature beneath a proper veneer
Who shattered the glass of his past dreams!
...

Beautiful Arcadian land, cast
In sublime Martian-green splendour!
Whose colossal mountains in bloom are
Dotted with blobs of white woollen sheep,
...

Looking out from this fog of doubt
I lie swallowed in by my insufferable
Defeat, but my heartbeat defiantly seeks,
No less than a way to
...

A formless gas keeps rising
Beyond my senses of normality
Assuring me of its existence,
Its gray despair
...

And it all slowly peels away
All the childhood laughter, scolding parent voices,
The ebullient fresh world we saw through young eyes
...

My head, brimming with the bees
Of a day’s fill of other people’s voices, is
Thoroughly soaked through, a noisy beehive
That is scratching & plying the cranium interior
...