new work.. thereabouts..
Category: Writing and Poetry

Home Is A Sadness

Each feature

was indistinct and yet

together,

arresting.

It was hard to tell from

her huddled lump

how long she had been

away.

The green of the

sleeping bag,

vaguely pastoral

against the concrete

paving slabs,

suited the bracken of the waves

that spilled and obscured

her forehead.

Not sixteen,

from the country perhaps,

though wild roses had long

vacated her cheeks.

and her lips were as blue as the sky

that had harshly frozen her.

The copper lifted her,

cradled her

as his firstborn

and,

though hardened from

the bodies of flamed babies

in the blackened back seats of cars,

and only yesterday had unearthed

a vomit spattered blade

from the stomach of

a fourteen year old loner,

who liked to fire libraries

after his English teacher

asked him please

not to follow her home

anymore,

his brittle tears

flowed for the

broken twig girl

so far from the home

which ate her childhood.

Somewhere, in that parlour

a cold fire grate howls,

a piano stool stands coldly

and a vase, empty in the window

still waits for bluebells

fom the childish arms

now gone.

03:46 - 26 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

My toe dipping in.. new work.. thanks
Category: Writing and Poetry

Tinnitus

Hollow souled,

she still believes the hole in her own hype;

constantly despairs in her

own lack of substance,

hurries through everything with

fingers jammed in her ears.

Peace is a fear,

the quite question

in a quite room is

the enemy of every deceiver.

When in need of amusement, she twists

the splinters in her fingers as

atonement for her lack of pain.

She is passion, collected in a loving hand,

but cooled.

Every empty platform has an expectation of nothingness

the moments after the carriages pull away and yet

they still sit and wait.

The human child learns and builds

it's world from hearsay

rather than truths

and this is the playground

for her sound bite dialogue,

so expertly honed and pitched to

disrupt the natural rhythm of things and

create an exasperated love,

even in her host

who considers eviction

a final solution.

Only in silence can she be judged

so she continues to chatter over thoughts,

hides in the clatter and

listens to none.

She cried when her small charge announced he

relied only on himself in a sea of love.

She would give all of herself to not re create

the noise in him.

15:01 - 26 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, Finally! Number 10 - Bus Stop
Category: Writing and Poetry

The rain pools finally dried up,
I noticed as I stood in
one while talking to a man
who seemed to see a smile
in my ribcage.

You told me, once
of an Evertonian who,
gripping his lager can
in a sea of running sports drinks,
observed with too much spit
that no one seemed to walk here.

The man recalled my face
and told me
you were seen,
walking faster than you did
on the day I relieved you
of your key.

I assume a morbid curiosity powered you
to where you no longer had business.

I realise again
that the lock remains
and your pocket carries a copy.

02:55 - 20 Comments - 38 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged by Si 9: Thoughtings
Category: Writing and Poetry

I wonder often if my mind is quite
right.

I apply lipstick to
a down turned mouth
and I allow it to occur to me that
perhaps that there is little
more to rely on than cosmetic
bandaging these days.

A little bag of tricks has been
my often armoury,
I turn to it when I need to
repaint a face
that does not hint at the
deep sad pools where
children fish
and find nothing but an
old boot on the end of their lines.

I recall the blackberries that
coiled outside the window of
a holiday cottage in long ago Wales.
I found I could crawl through
the window and drop into the night,
escape the prison my parents
had booked for themselves, where
the baby still needed feeding and they
were trapped in a strange place
with no release from each other
but the drone of the TV.

Odd things they can be,
family holidays.

Blackberry nights spent
after sandcastle days.

My sister and I wailed like widows
as our beach ball drifted away
upon the late afternoon tide.
We demanded Daddy save it,
Cried for him to risk all
to save our candy striped
plaything.
He would have done it too
but we had to beat the traffic.

I am lost in
the dark and my faith
is bitten down

I look for the curve of happiness
where I can.
I see it in the swell of pregnancy,
and find it briefly
in the faces of the children
and am soothed.

06:55 - 44 Comments - 42 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 8: Landmines
Category: Writing and Poetry

Your memory is a liar.
I go looking for the trouble
you left lying around
for me to pull at, turn over
and toss from hand to hand,
before smashing church windows
from my shoulder.

Your fabrication
is dry on your tongue,
and my vocal chords
bleed
from the false friction
of buried discoveries,
that haunt the dark corners
of the path behind us.

I circle back
despite your grip on my arm.
I can see the litter
flowing from your pockets
and will collect and recycle it all
until it means nothing.

06:22 - 15 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 7. Roast Chicken
Category: Writing and Poetry

The bone cracked gravy
is spiked with lemon thyme
and the dregs of a slightly
uninteresting Chablis.

The salad bowl is smeared
with the cut side of smoked
garlic.
Now, oil, vinegar and
Dijon mustard
amalgamate on the tip
of an enthusiastic fork to
coat the gathered herbs
and nasturtium

Catch the buttery sizzle of
tiny, fresh dug potatoes;
oh staple sustenance!
It could be dauphinoise
or sauté or, oh please!,
sticky, Sunday roasted;
so long as it nurtures
and comforts
it will often be
the best bit.

The much loved bird
steams in it's crispness,
silently seething with the
promise of deliciousness,
pricking the nostrils of the
neighbours, teasing them
to be invited friends.

This is my tavola,
I would share it
and the wine.

Gentle tendrils of honeysuckle
will wind around us,
the candles will flicker
as we tell the stories that
we are deep into the
warm hush of the night.

02:19 - 25 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 6: Repeated on BBC3
Category: Writing and Poetry

Doctor Who
makes me cry
and I have never really
been able to understand
why it causes the crust of
my Englishness to crack and
weeps saline silliness
most Saturday nights.

Now I doubt this
translates globally
but you need to know
that The Doctor has saved
the Universe countless times
and he saves me from
my inner cynic and allows me
to suspend my disbelief in
among the wildest of galactic
planes.

When they call him "Time Lord"
I shiver with the faith of
a limitless history,
prickle with
excitement as a story arc
buds,
and wonder whatever happened
to Davros.

I used to watch it from behind
the nylon nastiness of our
1970's couch.
A sofa that could

have easily been an alien
transmogrification as much
as it was poor interior design.

I used to watch it with my Dad.
Perhaps that
is what makes me cry.

06:03 - 37 Comments - 37 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 5: Bowland Lamb
Category: Writing and Poetry

It's so long
since the water-fresh air
was a daily thing,
though the spike of industry
added a peculiarity
I found comforting.

Nowhere but there
have I found,
valleys so darkly black with heather nor
people so darkly pigmented with humour,
proudly doorstep open, yet
closed in by the elements.

Close my eyes
and I see,
the bareback girl
clatter her Palomino
down the diagonal pitched high street
on a muffin fresh Saturday.

Open my eyes
and I see
my family.

I giggled for an hour
when told
of the giant hotpot in Garstang,
that did not do justice
to the rain sodden coats of the lambs
that had fallen into it.

My Dad had a theory
that he glad shared about
but then,
we all have a theory on hotpot.

I have been away
a long, long time
and embrace the distance,
the difference,

But do know,
the beer is better
back there.

05:50 - 32 Comments - 30 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 4. Churn.
Category: Writing and Poetry

Did we

ever

really

move on from

the shaky

frailty

of the last

six

months?

Have we

conquered

the sheer

fear

of this new

possibility?

The unexpected

collision of

life

malfunctions

left us standing

opposite

each other.

We, tentatively,

lay by the water

to tend each others

wounds

and discovered we

could be.

At once

my world

changed

and I became

me.

Now I am a wife

a lover

a mother

and always will

be.

05:19 - 34 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si, 3 - The Library
Category: Writing and Poetry

Two weeks after he left…..

Eight coats of overpriced

eggshell finally imparted

the dusty permanence

I sought from my alcoves.

Satisfied, I brought my tomes

forth and spent a happy afternoon

sorting and stacking the books that

fed my soul, heart and belly.

My American poets rubbed

each other up the wrong way, while

Oscar and Spike took up

far too much room.

The Russians approved of their

proximity to the hearth

and uninterrupted view of the street.

Meanwhile the Brits said little

but looked pained.

The cooking and travel

sections beamed with nurture.

The quiet evocation of

shortbread winters

and caramel summers

so excited me

that I whisked two volumes

directly to the kitchen,

intent on laying a table

for long tentative friends

that I may soothe our

reintroduction with

unctuous preparations.

A friend called and assured me

that to have sections

demonstrated a calm mind.

Others worried and those

that loved me

teased.

I smiled.

The shelves were voracious

enough to leave room

for more

words, words, words.

……. My home, finally,

became my own.

02:18 - 38 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si 2 - Lammack Fields
Category: Writing and Poetry

I must have presented

myself as a snack

as I vaulted

boldly

into the paddock.

That nutmeg foal, unprepared

for polite visitation,

took a bite

from my tender tummied,

eight year old

trunk,

and hung on grimly.

Pain and foolishness

mixed and overwhelmed

my cheeks;

Entertained, my captor

deepened his teeth

and thereby my flush to a

vibrant purple.

Whatever it’s colour,

I could not lose it

before my briefly impressed,

rag tag of an audience;

My smudge faced little sister,

the neighbours kids,

and their toys,

all anticipated nothing less

than wild west bravado, but

my lips and eyes brimmed

and implored horsey to

release me.

He demurred and instead

sharply pulled a

shout from me.

Nothing to be done,

I struck his

hopeful muzzle.

Surprised, he dropped me

and we both calmly regarded

my mangled middle, which was

left churning between us.

One second later,

I bounded the fence

and kept on

running..

I never really liked babies after that.

00:54 - 39 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged By Si - Cold Water
Category: Writing and Poetry

Roughing up the clouds

the wind surprised us all

with an angry spray of rain.

"It’s honking down",

said the geese,

and it was.

I preferred to keep

the darkness

inside and view

the murky relief

of a moss scented sky

through the freckled window

that still needed a clean.

Back home,

my sisters

love of fresh air provoked

a stubbornly ajar door,

even in January.

Little Eve asked that

the windows and doors

be shut,

but in vain

so she sullenly wore

her bobble hat to dinner,

trailing her scarf

and fingers in the beans.

I glow at the memory

and am warm

as the rain scratches the skin

of those exposed to its elements.

06:45 - 46 Comments - 48 Kudos - Add Comment

Dust
Current mood: back soon
Category: back soon Writing and Poetry

The tentative hollow

in the landscape

indicates the

position of the deletion.

A spiral of vultures

leads the crowd

to the spectacle

of the widows

out crying each other,

scrambling over the

dead bones.

Here,

somewhere

is the affirmation of the

importance

of each

to him.

One is suttee

the other will live on,

alone.

They demand

proof that ones grief

is real grief;

Big,

epic,

hounding,

bleeding grief;

where the other is merely

slicing onions

in the rain.

20:52 - 54 Comments - 58 Kudos - Add Comment

Joe
Current mood: blessed but rushed
Category: blessed but rushed Writing and Poetry

Today,

i felt the press

of your little head

into my hip

as we casually walked on,

(your sisters scampering

ahead of us,

your Daddy,

connected to all of us

by the constant,

invisible thread,

though I know not

where he

stood

at that, exact moment)

the baby-bear

pressure

made me

gasp as if

your fresh born

fingers

had just captured

my thumb.

In this first moment,

I held you

and we sewed

the seed of our permanent,

fledgling love.

Currently listening : How to Save a Life By The Fray Release date: 13 September, 2005

06:54 - 67 Comments - 66 Kudos - Add Comment

My Poem For Si, On His Birthday - The Man Who Grew Poets
Category: Writing and Poetry

The Man Who Grew Poets

What if there were
someone who grew poets
with his words?
A man who's gentle care of the
turnip tops,
encouraged beauty from poo?
Well, wouldn't you
embrace him?

Let's say he was a modest type,
though nothing false here.
he knows his onions
and knows they make people
cry.

Why wouldn't you smile
at the man who
draws rainbow friendships
across the Worlds oceans
through every natural, social
and cultural divide?

Yes, he scares spiders
from the dark corners
of dusty libraries,
but the positive side of
elitism is that it affects
only a few.

You have to love a man
who knows
that poetry was grown
a thousand years ago,
and not in test tubes.

English to his sock holes,
I see him
a tender cored, football
optimist,
salt in his nostrils
and a million words dancing
in his mind.

A man like that would be a friend
Of mine.

14:23 - 16 Comments - 32 Kudos - Add Comment