Some recent poems

About battling with your head, romantic love, my commitment to speaking my mind….. and one for Mother’s Day

Poems, for me, emerge from bubbling emotions and generally my emotions haven’t been bubbling quite so much recently, so I haven’t penned as many.

I say ‘bubbling’, I often align emotion with water, sometimes worry my emotions will dry up and I’ll run out! I imagine it as clothing on a washing line. When we are children and teenagers, there it is…..fresh, heavy, dripping and dangling, the weight of it so shiny and obvious.

Then, as young adults, we start to catch each wind of change, move with it, learn to dance rather than hang.

But does it dry completely over time?

Just as human bodies physically dehydrate and shrivel, does emotion eventually vacate you? Leave you all wrung out?

When I was young, I used to worry about having too much feeling. I feared mental illness because the brutality of the world and intensity to which I felt emotional pain, overwhelmed me.

These days, I fear the opposite - losing the ability to feel; becoming indifferent. Laughing or crying can feel like underused, dormant skills and expressing myself in those ways, like reacquainting myself with something I haven’t done in a while, like riding a bike.

So…. four poems, three rhyme, one doesn’t.

The first ‘Secret Garden’ is about romantic love born of faith. I had an idea of two rambling roses on either side of a towering wall, each rose unaware of the other, destined to entwine if they follow a natural urge to strive for sun.

The second one ‘Landlady’ is about wanting to forget people from your past. People who haunt your thoughts but whose presence you have no control over. That lack of power is frustrating, how you long to evict them, banish them…….how they stubbornly remain, unwanted guests with such disregard for your ‘home’, your mind. That’s how the ‘landlady’ came to mind. Often I want to kick them out for good!

The third ‘All or Nothing’ is me venting and reiterating my stance about being authentic on Substack and other social media. It’s a reminder to any new subscribers, that I have strong opinions and won’t be toned down.

And finally…. ‘My Mum and I’.

I wanted to write a Mother’s Day poem for my mother (it’s Mothering Sunday here in the UK), but our relationship isn’t a flowery one. I wanted something that captured what it actually is, rather than some sentimental twaddle about what society expects it to be.

Enjoy. I hope you all have a lovely day and week ahead.

Secret Garden

Within a secret garden

Where fragile tendrils cleave

A trellis made of wishes

Casts fresh kisses out as leaves

Aching for a symmetry

That echoes all she grows

A mirror for her mystery

A twinning for each rose

Maybe there, behind the stone

Another bloom exists

Clambering the bleak

Searching for summer that it missed

Persistent in their quest, they inch

So steadily they rise

Trusting in the blessed light

To lead them to blue skies

They cannot know, they only feel

Their guide, a dappled shine

One day soon, they know not when

Their patterns shall entwine

Landlady

How do you get someone to leave your head?

Is it a building, am I landlady?

Must I give them notice?

Insist that they vacate me?

And if so, will they go quietly?

Or make an ugly scene?

Maybe they will squat up there

Freeloading - I’m a soft touch

Never could be forceful

I trust them with the keys……..

.

If only they’d been good tenants

Treated it well

Oh, they could’ve stayed forever!

Had the whole gaff to themselves

Well……..shared it with me

.

Was beautiful, once, the space.

Thoughts lounged on velvet sofas

Fairy lights dipped like birds of fire

My mind had vaulted ceilings

Curving as arm arches in a ballet

Huge open windows

Draped with voile curtains

Swept me up in silver

.

And the light!

Oh, how it licked me!

Broad stripes, up and down

Painting every corner

Dust danced in dawn lit discos……

How did it get so cluttered?

I guess they all left something behind

Still get their mail - no warning

Sometimes arriving as smell, a voice…..

Always, as that ONE DAMN SONG

.

And no-one’s ever gonna treat it same as you, are they?

Your place

Look after it the way you do

Why would they?

It’s temporary lodging to them

Doss down

Move on

.

Not sure why I ever let anyone in

Right tip up there, now

All the shit they left

Suppose it’s because I don’t like the alternative

Too much room for one

And sometimes a view’s so beautiful

You just want to say;

“Look! Check out this rainbow!”

But maybe vacant’s better than trashed, hey?

Do I see that many rainbows these days?

That many sunsets?

Not as many as I used to.

I will change the locks……..

As soon as that record’s stopped playing.

All or Nothing

I am all or I am nothing

Need no crowd to raise me tall

Won’t be swayed by praise or money

Approval holds no weight at all

I’m not here to please your ego

No desire to play a game

Find your fools on social media

Desperate for five minute fame

I’m not here to ‘grow subscribers’

I’m here to write what’s on my mind

Freedom is the thing I value

I shall speak just as I find

My Mum and I

My mum and I, we mill along

Treading the same old ground

“What’s the weather like by you?”

“Up here, it’s chucked it down”

She tells me she’s been planting up

And what’s been on the news

I shouldn’t talk of politics

Or share my ‘extreme views’

.

The olden days, her golden days

Are favourite conversation

And ‘God moves in mysterious ways’

When there’s no explanation

She tells me what her ailments are

Of neighbours who have died

We never talk of feelings or

The last time that we cried

.

But sometimes, when a bond is deep

These things need not be stated

For loyalty is everything

And gesture overrated

Seldom do we hug or kiss

Just not that kind of mother

But what I prize above this

Is she’s loved me like no other