Poems

A few I wrote this week

Sparkle and Comfort

My power is a spider, collapsed in the night

Back broken with babies, she gave up the fight

All those little legs carried, webs made in hurry

Flies she sucked dry as she drained them of worry

If patience means waiting, then patience I’m good at

You’ll find me at stations, hopeful as April

One day, I know it’s coming, the one with my name on

Taking me home, and I’ll instantly know it

The shining of diamonds, soft sound of a seashell

Sparkle and comfort, joy born without effort

Paler

The world grows paler without him

Colour drains from grassy blades

Bluebells sulk, dull imitations

Sunny meadow slips to shade

.

Sometimes, I spy a distant rainbow

Colours mingle, maypole strands

A fading trace of violet wonder

Mossy haze of promised land

.

I grow paler without him

Despite the weather growing bright

For how can I absorb the sunshine

When I face internal night?

Dust

I’ve never understood life’s point

Felt reason to be here

Had a cause or vision

To nurture or hold dear

I envy those with purpose

Who know their inner ‘why’

For if it all amounts to dust

Why would we even try?

But even dust has meaning

To those who watch it catch the sun

I see it play on this fine day

A last gift, given by someone

Beautiful Prisoner

Beautiful prisoner

Behind your own glass

Watching the world

Passing by, high speed train

I so want to touch

Smash the window right in

But the pane is your pain

And your pain, is within

Plunge pool

His words, exploding candy

Each one a leaping journey

Popcorn on her body

Tingle and sensation

Psyched up, tense as wire lace

Ready for the plunge pool

Climb into the ice bath

Bracing for the crackling

Fissures of built pressure

Suspended in his sculpture

.

Pelts of fault, pole vaulting

Hail on her inferno

Escaping from the opaque

Translucent then transparent

Knows he sees inside her

Lost pink-eyed lab rabbit

In his maze of awe and theory

Seeking jaws of exit

.

Grace he couldn’t give her

Reins are stubborn grass stains

Controlling mental chariots

Only thing he’d learned to steer

How long can she endure?

Chill, cruel concertina

Compression and expansion

Flattened Jack Frost pattern

Doilying her windscreen

Obscuring whorls of crystal

And part of her still liked it

.

Because, when he grew colder

She found she could best cool down

Becoming tepid water

Milder from immersion

Her warm breath ever weaving

A spreading dye in his mouth

Jamming frozen voices

Cerise purse of their riches

As she herself drank the liquid

Of his blackened bruise

Fermenting as a bramble

.

Wishes became curses

Curses became medicine

And there they held each other

Merged as married marbles

Stretched cats in crushed damask

Petal of their mirrors

Trying on each other’s scent

Smudged as sage, still blending

Imagine if….

Imagine if we took our masks off

Cried out hearts to folk on traíns

Said all our thoughts when people asked us

Spilled our guts, burst clouds of rain

Imagine a plain “how’s it going?”

If acts were dropped and barriers down

If people truly cared to listen

Souls, were missing children, found

Imagine speech with kind intention

Where time is given, truth is prized

No mind games or learned convention

Wounds are healed, love realised.