Poems from this week’s swinging moods

Moods really do swing, don’t they?

Or they do for me.

Maybe it’s my age - although all my adult life I feel I’ve been blaming hormones like a bitch.

At the moment, I find myself saying “it’s the peri-menopause”, before that it was PMS, pregnancy, the pill…. Why do women do that? Explain away feelings in some way - like you can’t just feel something and it be valid in its own right!

Even now I find myself doing it with the bastard moon!

Can I not give myself permission to experience emotion without it being part of some phase or other? If we are indeed comprised mainly of water, it’s only right we sway, glide and crash inside.

Is it comfort or excuse that a feeling can be the fault of something out of our control?

Sometimes, in a day I can go from hoping for death (Midnight Kiss) to euphoria - wanting to hug everyone (I love what you bring to my table). My heart digs her own grave, lays still for a while, only to exhume herself and shimmy around the cemetery proclaiming she’s not dead.

Sometimes people hurl earth on, other times they stretch out their arms to dance then hoop me around in scoops of peach melba dusk.

Or do they?

The thing is, the world remains the same, it’s only our perception that changes. This simple truth helps me when I’m low.

I hand myself *the bus* card - “don’t worry there’ll be another one along soon!”

And it’s true.

Keep waiting at the ‘mood bus stop’. Another one WILL turn up……. eventually!

Of course, we can try and help this along too by doing things we respond positively to - eating well, exercising, blah de blah blah……

I wrote these in the last week or so. A couple I’ve put out on social media earlier in the week, the others I haven’t.

Dog

Today I found myself a dog

Lying low outside a shop

Tied with greying, fraying string

Eyes, a copper yelp of hope

The string was weak and he looked strong

Could easily rise and break away

But chose to lie there on the floor

As passers by took on their day

They patted hunks of matted gold

Wincing at the chance of rain

Did their errands, went to work

On their way home, saw him again

Night will stroke him like a ghoul

Wind slicing through his precious fur

He’ll reminisce like some old fool

Of when his special person cared

And some will get it, some will not

Some will think “why don’t you run?

Take your chance on better days!”

Perhaps, they never loved someone

Daybreak Cake

The sun cracked daybreak like an egg

Into blue bowl of sky

Baking cakes of butterscotch

To serve to those on high

The tawny birds of coffee lace

Are grateful for the crumb

They skim and sail and chase their tail

Waiting for Spring to come

Midnight Kiss

Tonight, I want to take a bus

Past pecking towns of waste and sin

Eat salty chips on the top deck

Balm bored lips with taste again

Inhale a blast of teenage smoke

Pound sting into my jaded eyes

Invest in someone else’s joke

Hear conversations that aren’t mine

I’ll get off at an inky lake

Tread, wobbly foal into abyss

Some jagged star will spear the way

Join seamlessly, the midnight kiss

Weekends

.

You stumble in my room of calm

Clumsy jolt of stale stench

The beaten drum rolls into bed

A baste of numbing, toxic bleach

Tomorrow you’ll be bleak, forlorn

I’ll glare at you with ice contempt

And why….. because I am no saint

Two messed up souls who split the rent

I love what you bring to my table

.

The stories, smiles spilled on my page

That turn my soul from brittle beige

To moths that fly to strawberry moon

Court golden light and find the tune

Of buzzing wings and leaping hearts

Pieces of Spring that reach for north

The fiery red, the green and new

The sweep of stars, the silver dew

Mirrors to see my best reflection

Night to give my day direction

I grow from all your mundane chatter

Never think that you don’t matter

.